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WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA ■ SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 




The Tsar 



WITH THE RUSSIAN 
ARMY 

BEING THE EXPERIENCES OF A 
NATIONAL GUARDSMAN 



BY 

Robert r. Mccormick 

MAJOR FIRST CAVALRY, ILLINOIS NATIONAL GUARDS 



WITH MAPS, CHARTS, AND 2k FULL PAGE 
ILLUSTRATIONS 



Nefo ffatfc 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1915 

All rights reserved 



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Copyright, 1915, 
By ROBERT R. McCORMICK. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1913. 



Nnrfooafi ^Srrss 

J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick <fc Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 

SEP i6ib/6 
©CI.A411534 



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THE GRAND DUKE NICOLAS NICOLAIEVITCH 

OF RUSSIA 
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF ALL THE ARMIES 

WHO, AS A SIGN OF FRIENDSHIP FOR AMERICA, INVITED ME TO VISIT 
THE TROOPS UNDER HIS COMMAND, AND WHO, AS A FURTHER SIGN OF 
FRIENDSHIP, PERMITTED ME TO SEE THE INSIDE OF THE RUSSIAN 
MILITARY ORGANIZATION AND FRONTIER FORTRESSES, SO THAT OUR 
COUNTRY MIGHT HAVE THE BENEFIT OF RUSSIA'S UNEQUALLED EX- 
PERIENCE IN MILITARY AFFAIRS AND MIGHT BE ABLE TO ADOPT SUCH 
OF HER METHODS APPLICABLE TO OUR PARTICULAR CONDITIONS 



INTRODUCTION 

I had been so long at an office desk when 
the war broke over Europe that the idea of 
going into it never occurred to me. 

I had been considered too young for the 
war of 1898. Parental objection had stopped 
my attempting to witness the war between 
Japan and Russia. I had been compelled 
to devote myself to business affairs for 
seven years to the exclusion of all wider 
interests. It was thus not due to any initia- 
tive of mine, but to the energy of my mother, 
who planned for me the experiences she had 
forbidden ten years before, that I received 
the following invitation: 

The Plaza, 

New York, 

Tuesday. 
Dear Mrs. McCormick, — 

I have just received the following telegram from 
Sazonoff : — 



viii INTRODUCTION 

" Having preserved the best remembrances of the 
last Ambassador, Mr. McCormick, and wishing to give 
to the United States a new proof of his sympathy, the 
Grand Duke consents, as a unique exception, to admit 
your Mr. McCormick on the field of active fighting, 
but Mr. McCormick must arrive, not as a war corre- 
spondent, but as a distinguished foreigner personally 
known to the Grand Duke. This will give him an 
exceptionally prominent position, which is refused to 
others, and at the same time it will not prevent him 
from sending to America correspondences, which, of 
course, will have to pass through the censor." 

I am delighted it has been settled that way, and I 
hope you are satisfied, too. 

We expect to be back in Washington either the day 
after to-morrow, Thursday, or on Friday, and then I 
must have a talk with Mr. McCormick. 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) G. Bakhmeteff. 

In fact, it came as a distinct shock to me. 
Ten years had elapsed since I had taken any 
extended journey. Nearly that much time 
had passed since I had absented myself so 
much as a week from business occupation, 
and I was loath to undertake the discomforts 
of the one and the idleness of the other. But 



INTRODUCTION ix 

most of all I wondered whether I retained 
the physical courage to go upon the battle- 
field. 

I knew that physical courage was as much 
dependent upon training and practice as any 
other form of physical activity. For years 
I had had none of this training, but, on the 
other hand, had been steeped as fully as any 
other in the cult of cowardice which has been 
such a distinct feature of modern American 
intellectual thought. 

However, the offer was one that could not 
be rejected, — the only stranger to be in- 
vited to the Russian armies. The duty of 
bringing to America the information which 
"was denied to others"; above all, to see 
from within the military organization of a 
country geographically so like ours and so 
eminent in military experience, was a call to 
patriotism that could not be refused. 

On the day I sailed from New York, the 
10th day of February, I received the follow- 
ing note from the Russian Ambassador: 



x INTRODUCTION 

The Plaza, 

New York. 
My dear Mr. McCormick, — 

Here you are, — I hope they will prove useful. 

Good luck, good health, good fun, — and use your 
good clear eye to see the truth and your pen to spread 
it. 

Yours sincerely, 

(Signed) G. Bakhmeteff. 

I arrived in Liverpool the 18th of February, 
the first day of the submarine blockade. 



CONTENTS 



I. 


With the British . 


1 


II. 


The Emperor of Russia 


32 


III. 




46 


IV. 


Warsaw 


63 


V. 


On the Rawka Battle Line 


76 


VI. 




97 


VII. 


Military History of the War tili 


i 




the End of April . 


119 


VIII. 


The Russian Army 


146 


IX. 


The Kazaks 


170 


X. 


With the "Corps de la Garde" 


188 


XI. 


Trips from the Corps Headquarters 


, 207 


XII. 


OSSOWETZ ..... 


219 


XIII. 


Upon Modern Fortifications 


230 


XIV. 


Leaving Russia .... 


248 



Appendix A : 

History of the Acts Leading up to the 

Great War 255 

Appendix B : 

Lessons for America from Great Brit- 
ain's Shortcomings in this War . 281 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Tsar Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

The Grand Duke Nicolas, Commander-in-Chief 46 

General Yanouskevitch 50 

With one Hand he struck the Austrians, with the 
other he dragged the Germans from the Gates 

of Paris 54 

Prince Toundoutoff 60 

Kazak Cavalry 66 

Range Finder for Air-gun Battery ... 72 
Prepared Reserve Trench . . ., . .98 
The Front Trench in the Carpathians, taken from 

between the Opposing Lines .... 98 
One of the Inner Forts of Peremysl . . .104 
Two Austrian Children Singing Austrian Hymns 

to Russian Soldiers . . . . .110 
Kazak Officer Playing with Austrian Children in 

Galicia 110 

Rear View of the Front Trench in the Carpathians 112 
General Gutor, Commanding 36th Infantry Divi- 
sion, Watching Artillery Fire in the Carpa- 
thian Mountains 116 

Typical Russian Infantry ..... 148 

Russian Field Hospital 152 

Field Chapel ....... 152 



XIV 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Typical Russian Reservist 

Austrian Prisoners 

Kazaks of the Caucasus 

German Prisoners 

Red Cross Wagon 

Siberian Transport Ponies 

Kazak Sabre Exercises 

Don Kazak Rough Riders 

Don Kazak and Boy Scout 

1. Grand Duke Boris. 2. General Bezobrazoff 

Commander of Guards Corps 
Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovitch. Prince Peter 

of Oldenbourg, Brother-in-law of Tsar 

Grand Duke Peter of Russia 
The Train used as Headquarters . 
Commander of Fortress of Ossowetz 
Unexploded German Shells . 
Near View of Field Gun 
Firing a Field Gun 



FACING PAGE 

156 



162 
162 
162 
166 
166 
172 
172 
180 

192 



200 
216 



222 
232 
232 



WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 



WITH THE RUSSIAN 
ARMY 

CHAPTER I 

With the British 

On the steamer I met two ladies belonging 
to that class whose names are never omitted 
from the society columns of newspapers, and 
who were, of course, very strongly in sym- 
pathy with the Allies. They were frankly 
and unaffectedly ignorant of public opinion 
in America, and very much concerned to find 
that it was not as universally sympathetic 
with England as they were. They wanted 
me to state my opinion to the British au- 
thorities, and introduced me to Lady Essex, 
an American woman married to an English 
peer, and by her I was taken to lunch with the 
Prime Minister of England. 

To the Prime Minister I stated my judg- 



2 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

ment of American public opinion to be that 
the small element known as "society" was 
very strongly pro -Ally; that the element of 
German ancestry, and particularly that of 
German birth, was naturally pro-German; 
and that the bulk of the nation was strongly 
pro-American and was inclined to be critical 
of all the nations involved in the war. 

That American public opinion could be 
neutral was a great surprise to Mr. Asquith. 
He felt very strongly the course of his gov- 
ernment, with special reference to the achieve- 
ment of Home Rule for Ireland, the assurance 
of religious equality in Wales, the various 
carefully worked out measures for the im- 
provement of living conditions, the supremacy 
of the public over the aristocracy, entitled it 
to the whole-souled support of the American 
republic against the German military mon- 
archy. 

At the time of my visit Mr. Asquith had 
entirely effaced himself in the conduct of the 
war and was confining his efforts to bringing 
the full force of his authority to support Lord 



WITH THE BRITISH 3 

Kitchener, just as some fifty-odd years before 
President Lincoln had effaced himself to sup- 
port General Grant. Indeed, Mr. Asquith 
reminds me very much of the Lincoln of war 
times, not the Lincoln of tradition which 
has been built up in recent years, but the 
Lincoln my grandfather described — the 
patient, comprehending politician, who bore 
on the force of his personality the strains 
of jealousies, hatreds, and distrusts which 
threatened to wreck the machinery of his 
government. 

If the war turns out well for his country, 
Mr. Asquith's name will become immortal. 
If it turns out ill, there will be no more 
democratic government in Europe for several 
centuries. 

Through Mr. Asquith I met Sir Edward 
Grey, Minister of Foreign Affairs. In no 
part of my trip was I so much surprised as by 
this Minister. I had thought of the British 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs as about like 
our own Secretaryship of State, — the posi- 
tion given to the second most important poli- 



4 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

tician belonging to the party in power irre- 
spective of his qualifications or previous 
experience in diplomacy, and depending upon 
the able and educated counsellor or first 
assistant secretary for information, and upon 
the President for decisions. 

Sir Edward Grey was as fluent in talking of 
foreign affairs as is nobody in the American 
government excepting Mr. Alvey A. Adee, 
the second assistant Secretary of State, and 
he spoke with fully as much authority as a 
President. 

My final surprise was to learn that in 
politics there were at that time at least 
three members of the Cabinet more powerful 
than he. 

Sir Edward Grey elaborated the state- 
ments contained in the British White Book, 
and he gave back the life to the negotiations 
of which they had been stripped in the formal 
phraseology of diplomacy. I remember dis- 
tinctly his explaining that the problem as a 
problem presented by the murder of Sarajevo 
was much less difficult than the one pre- 



WITH THE BRITISH 5 

sented at the close of the Balkan war, when 
Austria refused to allow Servia to retain 
Durazzo. 

Solution was obtained in the former case, 
he said, because all of the diplomats and the 
Great Powers worked disinterestedly to find 
a basis on which they could avoid war. 
Peaceful solution failed in the present case, 
he insisted, only because Austria and Ger- 
many refused to consider any form of adjust- 
ment other than the imposition of Austria's 
sovereignty upon Servia. 

I also called upon Winston Churchill, 
First Lord of the Admiralty, then at the 
height of his turbulent conduct of the War 
Office. He was on top for the last time and 
was about to embark upon the unfortunate 
expedition to the Dardanelles. He did not 
refer to his master stroke in having the fleet 
ready mobilized at the time of the outbreak 
of war, but acknowledged it when I mentioned 
the subject. 

He spoke of the victory of the Falkland 
Islands as the logical outcome of the Navy 



6 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Department's activities, and expressed keen 
regret that the recent victory in the North 
Sea in which the Bluecher had been sunk, 
and which was at that time the cause of much 
British rejoicing, had not been more complete. 

Next to the Grand Duke Nicholas he is 
the most aggressive person I have ever met, 
and I think that if he had had a military in- 
stead of an academic education he would 
have made a great general or admiral. 

From England I passed over to France at 
midnight, all daylight passage at that time 
being stopped because of the German sub- 
marine blockade. 

In Paris I called upon the Foreign Minis- 
ter, Mr. Delcasse, my father's old friend, a 
man of active intellect and rapid speech, and 
from him heard much the same point of view 
I had heard from the British Minister; viz., 
that the French Republic defending Repub- 
licanism against Imperial conquest deserved 
at least the whole-hearted sympathy of the 
other great republic overseas. He made me 
feel, although he did not say it, that France 



WITH THE BRITISH 7 

remembered that when America was fighting 
for freedom, France had come to her rescue. 
He spoke strongly of the German methods of 
making war, of the shooting of citizens, of 
the wanton destruction of religious and artis- 
tic buildings. He was extraordinarily sur- 
prised when I told him that in America there 
was a great deal of doubt as to whether any 
reliance could be placed on any such allega- 
tions. And that is how I came to get to the 
front in France, because he procured for me a 
pass to see the condition of Arras. 

To Arras, then, I went a day or two later, 
experiencing the same emotions as affect all 
Americans arriving in warring countries. I 
travelled by train to Calais, where I was 
arrested by a fussy petty official. Only in 
France of all the warring countries does the 
average traveller find oppression from petty 
officials. At the time I attributed this to 
France's being in greater peril than any 
other contestant, but I have since been in- 
formed that it is due to the fact that these 
petty officials have so much political power 



8 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

that they can tyrannize and even graft at 
will. 

From Calais I went by train to St. Omer, 
from which point the French commission at 
the British Headquarters sent me to Arras. 

Of my visit to the city itself my diary 
says : — 

"Left for St. Pol 7.45. Arrived about 9. 
Waited one hour for pass. Left for Arras. 
Report road being heavily shelled. Arrived 
division headquarters about eleven. Noise 
of bombardment loud. Road reported dan- 
gerous. Only one auto allowed. Beat it 
into Arras. Not fired at. Saw Hotel de 
Ville was deliberately ruined and two churches 
destroyed. Considerable rifle and gun fire all 
around. Several shells fell in town. One 
was near enough to feel shock. Didn't see 
anything. Were within forty yards of Ger- 
mans. Didn't see them. People miserable. 
De Mas Latrie says his home on Belgian fron- 
tier destroyed by Bochs, also factory of his 
brother-in-law was taken down and shipped 
to Germany. Fine lunch. General refused to 
let me see his guns, of which he has over 100." 



WITH THE BRITISH 9 

After I had returned to London the trip 
appeared humorous and I wrote the following 
article about it : — 

It has been the part of most war corre- 
spondents to have thrilling experiences ; it 
remained for me to have a trip to the front 
which was funny from beginning to end. 

My permit to go to the front of the French 
army came through the intercession of the 
great French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Del- 
casse, about whom I will write more in an- 
other letter. 

I believe this astute diplomat broke through 
the rigid army regulations forbidding civilians, 
and especially newspaper men, from going to 
the front by asking leave for me to see the 
devastation wrought by. the Germans upon 
religious edifices and historical monuments. 

However, I did not know this when I rose 
at daybreak. 

My train to the front was not a military 
train, filled with soldiers, or even a supply 
train, but an accommodation, travelling with 



10 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

aggravating nonchalance a few miles in the 
rear of the embattled armies. 

We detrained at Calais — military terms 
are necessary in war correspondence. After 
dining quietly we returned to the railway 
station ten minutes before the train was due 
to start for that unmentionable point that was 
to see the beginning of our adventure. 

There we were promptly arrested. 

The military pass looked so helpless I pro- 
duced my passport. Fatal mistake ! On the 
passport my profession was given as a news- 
paper man, and newspaper men are forbidden 
at the front ! Fortunately, the stamps on 
my insignificant-looking military passport 
proved talismans strong enough to overcome 
any ill omen of my unfortunate profession. 

Finally we arrived at the commander's 
office. The officers rose at our entrance. The 
telegram from Paris had just arrived and 
orders had been given to furnish us with 
every convenience to visit the headquarters 
of General , that man who so distin- 
guished himself at the Marne and whose rise 
is one of the features of the war. 



WITH THE BRITISH 11 

"Would monsieur like to start at once, or 
if not, by what hour of the morning? Was 
monsieur alone or with a friend? Monsieur 
was with a friend. Very well, then, mon- 
sieur must have two automobiles, one for 
monsieur and the officer who would conduct 
him and one for monsieur's friend and the 
baggage." 

Monsieur's friend looked quite angry. 
Monsieur's desire to say that monsieur would 
have liked to have the other automobile an 
hour ago was resisted, and polite remarks 
that one automobile would surely be suffi- 
cient were cut short with the more polite 
rejoinder that of course monsieur was " tres 
large" and the automobiles were not over- 
strong. 

Then home, bed, and up the next morning, 
of course, at the crack of dawn, a la militaire. 
No one else was awake. Finally appears an 
old man who will provide bread and coffee. 

Suddenly arrive two enormous limousine 
automobiles, each capable of carrying seven 
people, each with a military driver and a foot- 



12 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

man on the box, and in one an exceedingly 
kind and courteous French officer, dressed in 
that new French gray, which I am sure is vis- 
ible when nothing else on earth can be seen. 

Again arises the desire for the thrill of 
battle, but it is soon dispelled by the quiet 
man in the brilliant gray, who says that his 
home is on the other side of the fighting lines. 
It had been totally destroyed, also the home 
of his bellemere and the factory of his beau- 
frere, the machinery of which he believes has 
been taken down and shipped to Germany. 

An hour's rapid running brings us to the 
headquarters of the army commander. We 
will now see the great man. But no, the great 
man has business of the republic to mind. 
In reasonable time is produced a pass to pro- 
ceed to headquarters of the general command- 
ing the division at Arras. 

Right and left are farmers working in the 
fields. War is evidenced only by numbers of 
trucks packed in rows, as they might be be- 
fore a big commercial house at home. 

Now it is raining hard, a cold drizzle, and 



WITH THE BRITISH 13 

rain and mud are coating the chauffeur. The 
casual and not sufficiently grateful guest is 
comfortably inside the big limousine. The 
machine skids a little and the officer breaks 
out impatiently. 

"It is impossible to control these chauffeurs ; 
because they owned the automobiles before 
the war they think they own them now." 

The officer is surprised when his guest 
bursts into a roar of laughter that he, a 
stranger, is sitting comfortably inside, while 
the rightful owner of the car is being covered 
with mud and cold rain. 

A tire bursts and we all descend. Hark! 
What is this we hear ? It is war, the greatest 
war, but it sounds sufficiently like the battle 
of Gettysburg at McVicker's theatre. 

The risibility aroused by the owner-chauf- 
feur will not down immediately, although the 
officer, who, by the way, has fought in every bat- 
tle of the war until two weeks ago, looks serious. 

"They are shelling Arras hard," he says. 
"If they are shelling the road also it may be 
impossible for us to go." 



14 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The guest is beginning to wish that they 
will be shelling it at least that hard or not at 
all. 

Arrived at division headquarters, the roar 
of cannonading is incessant and loud, but 
even as we wait it dies away. The officer 
returns and with him a captain who knows 
the road. There is no danger, he says, until 
we reach the top of the hill before Arras, and 
then there are three miles of straight road 
of which they have exact range, exposed to 
the enemy's fire. The party will go in one 
car to minimize the target. Target ! 

I hear the chauffeur of one car congratulat- 
ing the chauffeur of the other, but whether 
the man who goes or the one who stays be- 
hind is congratulated, I do not know. The 
captain directs the chauffeur when he reaches 
the top of the hill to put on full speed. "II 
faut filet," he says. He apologizes for taking 
the right hand seat, he wishes to have the 
speaking trumpet at hand, but for what pur- 
pose had never been made apparent. 

Conversation has slackened. Now even 



WITH THE BRITISH 15 

Riley is not talking about his intense desire 
to enter the front line of trenches. My own 
great fear is that in the company of three 
professional soldiers I may act foolishly. 

We reach the top of the hill, and as the 
spires of Arras come in sight each man puts on 
"the expression I want to be found with" 
look, and then the chauffeur turns the car 
loose. 

Hail Columbia: The road is absolutely 
smooth, with a strong down grade. I am sure 
that after the first half mile no shell could 
have overtaken us from behind, although we 
might have bumped into one going our way. 

The captain on my right shouts in my ear, 
"You will not be able to hear the shells 
coming," and I don't care, because I know the 
danger of the shells must be less than the 
danger from the machine. We are going over 
eighty miles an hour, and a burst tire or de- 
fective steering gear will prove as deadly as 
a 42-centimetre projectile. 

I realize also that it must be difficult for a 
gun three miles away to hit the racing target, 



16 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

but I do not appreciate then that our greatest 
danger is from a high explosive "obus" burst- 
ing in the road in front of us. Going at this 
speed it would be impossible to stop the car 
before disaster. 

At last we reach Arras, and the Germans, 
as is their custom following the entrance of 
an automobile, shell the town. Who can tell 
but the automobile may contain the com- 
manding general ? 

It is now we learn that we have come to see 
the ruin perpetrated by the "Boches," as the 
French universally call their German neigh- 
bors. 

We are led to the hospital, what remains 
of the once beautiful city hall, and the cathe- 
dral. Since I was brought here to witness 
these things I will say that they certainly 
went at them with true German thoroughness. 
They are still useful to make concrete, but for 
no other purpose. 

As shells were occasionally dropping in the 
little town, which covered perhaps half as 
much ground as the loop district, I was more 



WITH THE BRITISH 17 

interested in the atrocities the Germans were 
then perpetrating than what they had done to 
artistic triumphs or religious buildings. 

Bang, bang, bang ! about one a minute 
fell the high explosive shells. None fell 
within vision, but one landed in the next 
garden while we were standing in the hospital, 
and the fragments rattling round the wall or 
whirring overhead were decidedly audible. 

One of these shells killed six French soldiers. 
I was fortunately spared that sight and only 
heard of it as we were leaving the city. 

Military authorities to the contrary not- 
withstanding, I believe an old French town is 
the best possible modern fortress. Its ma- 
sonry work is superior to anything in modern 
times. A shell hitting a brick wall, for ex- 
ample, will cut a round hole and leave the 
rest of the wall intact. A howitzer shell will 
fall, as one did within fifty yards of us, and the 
devastation of its explosion is confined to a 
small space. People living in the cellars, 
vaulted masses of masonry, are safe except 
against "Jack Johnsons," those massive siege 



18 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

guns which destroyed the forts of Liege and 
Namur. 

Just now the French artillery begins to 
reply, the wonderful little 75s. There seem to 
be hundreds of them, but as each gun can fire 
over twenty shots a minute, there may be only 
a few batteries. There is a little rifle firing 
in the trenches 30 yards away, but if any 
bullets flew overhead or near us, I did not 
hear them. 

When the time arrives for our departure 
the captain explains it will not be possible to 
go back uphill as fast as we came down, and 
when I express my heartfelt thanks I believe 
he thinks I am boasting of a courage I do not 
possess. 

We return to headquarters unmolested. 

From a haystack on a hill-top we are shown 
the lines of the French and of the enemy, 
which in some places are only a few yards 
apart. We have an excellent lunch at divi- 
sion headquarters and are politely sent on our 
way. 

We had no inkling that even while we were 



WITH THE BRITISH 19 

at table the Germans made a bayonet attack 
on our immediate left and took several hun- 
dred yards of French trenches, which were 
retaken later. We did not see a single Ger- 
man, and not over a hundred French soldiers. 

We were told how many guns were used in 
holding this important salient and we heard 
the report of many, some very near us, but we 
never even guessed where a single one was 
placed. 

Of the intense feeling of these men who have 
rendered the maintenance of a republic pos- 
sible in Europe I will write when I have tried 
to measure my terms. We must learn from 
them, if our own republic is to endure. 

My French permit being limited to a visit 
to the ruins of Arras, I was not shown any 
part of the French army. 

I suggested to the general commanding 
the division that the Russians would ask me 
particularly about the "seventy-fives." 

"You have heard them?" he replied. 

"Yes, all around me." 

"And have you seen any of them?" 



20 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

"No, not a one." 

"Then tell the Russians that. It will show 
how well we conceal our gun positions." 

Not only were guns concealed, but men as 
well. 

We passed through the greater part of an 
army of 200,000 men but did not see over 
2000 of them. This is explained partly by 
the fact that most of the men not in the 
trenches were sleeping and that men are pur- 
posely kept under cover to prevent aeroplane 
scouts from estimating the numbers in any one 
place. 

The enormous number of houses in this part 
of France makes it easy to cover up men. The 
population has largely moved away, leaving 
houses, factories, and other buildings for the 
troops. 

An idea of the closeness of the settlements 
may be obtained when I say that they are more 
thickly dotted than in the suburbs of Chicago. 
I asked an officer why the houses were not all 
destroyed by artillery fire, and he answered : 

"They are too many." 



WITH THE BRITISH 21 

At home one shell would start a fire and 
burn a whole town. Here buildings are ma- 
sonry throughout, fire, bullet, and shrapnel 
proof. A shell from a field-piece only knocks 
a hole in a wall. 

French officers and men do not associate 
with each other when off duty, but when oc- 
casion arises for intercourse, such as news 
from the firing line, it is upon a basis of 
equality. On the other hand, orders are 
given in peremptory tone and rebuke is ad- 
ministered savagely. 

Two German prisoners, being escorted by 
as many cavalrymen, failed to salute a French 
colonel. 

He halted them and made them stand at 
attention and then stormed at them in a 
manner that made me fear he was about to 
order a summary execution. After he left I 
looked at the Germans' faces. They be- 
trayed anger, not fear. 

As the motor raced on I had an opportunity 
to judge the comparative invisibility of the 
different uniforms. The Germans were in 



22 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

the new slate color, the French escort in 
old, old blue coats and red trousers, the col- 
onel in the ringing steel gray just adopted. 

First the Germans were merged with the 
mud of the street, then the soldiers, and after 
all had disappeared, long after, the French 
colonel was plainly seen. 

We saw thousands of motor trucks, thou- 
sands of wagons, but of the traditional picture 
of war nothing — no, not quite nothing. Just 
at dusk on a hill-top we saw a mass of batteries 
limbered up, drivers in their seats, the officers 
mounted and conversing in groups. It might 
have been the subject of a picture. 

It was the reserve artillery waiting for dark 
to advance to position to shell the Germans 
who had gained some trenches that day. 

The value not only of discipline but of mili- 
tary bearing and even military appearance 
is apparent at the seat of war. 

Especially is this needed in officers. Sol- 
diers know almost nothing about the progress 
of the battle and are encouraged or lose heart 
by the appearance of their superiors. 



WITH THE BRITISH 23 

If any reader thinks this opinion is undem- 
ocratic or foppish, let him stand an hour under 
shell fire as I did at Arras and he will come to 
my way of thinking. 

As we returned through the army head- 
quarters we became aware of an air of 
anxiety and depression. An idea of the 
successful German attack had circulated 
around. 

Suddenly an automobile dashed in from the 
front. 

All eyes turned upon its occupants. 

They saw two men in that ringing gray, 
erect as lamp-posts, with carefully trimmed 
square beards and wearing expressions of 
theatrical resolution. They would have 
drawn eggs and oranges on South Water 
Street, but they brought only comfort to the 
anxious hearts in St. Pol. And I, moved by 
some strange impulse of mob psychology, 
felt a thrill strangely akin to a prayer. 

The French regained their trenches at day- 
break. 

Entirely by coincidence, my pass to Arras 



24 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

brought me to St. Omer, where Sir John 
French then had his headquarters. 

While in London I had asked Lord North- 
cliffe and Mr. Asquith if permission could not 
be obtained for me to see the British lines, 
but had received no answer up to the time 
of my departure. I therefore decided to 
call upon the Field Marshal in person and 
see if my request had been granted. I had 
taken with me to wear in Russia, at the sug- 
gestion of the Russian Embassy, my uniform 
as colonel in the Illinois National Guard, 
and before going to Arras I asked a former 
lieutenant in the United States army whether 
I should wear this uniform to the French 
front. He was emphatic in his refusal, and 
as I had no civilian clothes suitable for out- 
ing purposes, I made up a suit by grafting a 
city coat and waistcoat upon a pair of army 
breeches and topping it with an automobile 
cap, giving a fine likeness of a racehorse 
trainer. 

In this attire I presented myself at Field 
Marshal Sir John French's headquarters and 



WITH THE BRITISH 25 

presenting my visiting card, asked to see the 
Commander-in-Chief. I did not immediately 
see that person, but was received by an auto- 
cratic non-com. with bristling mustache who 
asked, in penetrating tone, if it were not a 
fact that I was a newspaper man. Upon my 
admission of this damning fact, he proposed 
to hear no more but to assign me to the special 
limbo prepared for such beasts. 

From this martinet I was rescued by a com- 
missioned officer who introduced himself as 
Lord Brook and politely told me that it was 
impossible for anybody to see the Com- 
mander-in-Chief, but that on the morrow he 
would endeavor to ascertain whether word 
of me had been received at headquarters 
from the Prime Minister. In the meantime 
he would see that I had a room at the 
hotel. 

It so happened that an acquaintance I had 
made in London knew Field Marshal French, 
and with that quality of wishing to help 
strangers that characterizes the English, had 
promptly written me a letter of introduction 



26 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

to be presented if I received permission to 
go to the front. I now presented it. This 
letter proving that I was not a fraud, which 
even my polite officer believed up to that 
time, I was most hospitably entertained, and 
dined that night with the Field Marshal and 
his Staff. 

Sir John French's photograph has fre- 
quently been in every newspaper and he has 
been described by many writers. I need only 
say, therefore, that February last he was 
hard as nails, and the fatigues of his cam- 
paign had made no visible impression upon 
him. He was preparing to fight the battle 
of Neuve Chapelle, although, of course, I did 
not know it at the time. There was no sign 
of nervousness over what he had to do. 

Sir John French, aside from his great 
military ability, is a most interesting per- 
sonality, a man of very fixed opinions and of 
fearlessness in giving expression to them. 
He held the best position in the British army, 
— Chief of the General Staff, — and this he 
relinquished rather than make the plan to 



WITH THE BRITISH 27 

coerce Ulster in the Home Rule matter. He 
has a sister who is a militant suffragist, and 
to whom — to the horror of law-abiding 
Englishmen — he lent aid and counsel. In 
refusing to take part in any military steps 
against Ulster he faced the alternative of 
resignation, which was not a simple thing for 
him, as he was a poor man. 

Without means of his own, and lacking 
any government appropriation, he would 
never have learned the terrain over which 
he has had to fight were it not that a friend 
of his, Mr. Brinsley Fitzgerald, took him in 
his automobile through Belgium and northern 
France on all of his furloughs. Thus the 
Commander-in-Chief of the British army was 
educated partly at the expense of a friend who 
is now his military secretary. 

I described the battle front at that time, 
as it has been described by every newspaper 
man that followed me, beginning with Fred- 
erick Palmer of the Associated Press. 

The newness is worn off of that subject, 
but I do not believe that interest in the 



28 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

British Expeditionary Force can ever die, 
although most of the Force is dead. 

Without a whimper, without a protest, it 
went to its destruction in the defence of the 
nation which had neglected it, just as our 
regular army must go some day unless by the 
grace of God we may learn preparedness in 
time. 

One day Major Charles Grant of the Cold- 
stream Guards took me to the front. He 
was the only one of seven officers of his com- 
pany to be on his feet at the end of a day at 
the Aisne. He had two bullet holes through 
his arm, and his tunic had been scorched by 
a shell that had blown him several yards. 
Only seven of his men out of two hundred 
and thirty remained. He commented on the 
fact that he should be the survivor of that 
battle, because he was not only the tallest 
man in his company, but one of the tallest 
men in Europe. 

From him I received a lesson in conduct 
under fire. He took me among other places 
to a certain observation station located in an 



WITH THE BRITISH 29 

abandoned base, and there we found a new 
officer unacquainted with the surroundings, 
just arrived to take the place of one who had 
gone to join his comrades across the Aisne 
and the Styx. 

Major Grant, with infinite detail, identified 
every object in sight through the little peep- 
hole in the roof, and while he was in the midst 
of his lecture German high explosive shells 
began to burst near by. I thought, as a 
matter of course, we would all run to shelter, 
but the two officers never moved. The in- 
struction went on without hurry, and when 
finished the pupil recited his lesson as though 
in a schoolroom. The men were not afraid. 
I was. I was very much afraid, and did not 
resist by a large margin the desire to ask my 
conductor to move to some safer place. This 
confession is not pleasant to make, but it is 
put down with a hope that other boys will be 
instructed in courage as I never was. The 
lesson I learned that day was not without 
value. I never got to enjoy the crash of 
high explosive shells nor was I ever over- 



30 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

whelmed with the desire to rush into a shower 
bath of machine gun fire. On the other 
hand, I never again approached the point of 
disgracing myself on the firing line. 

Physical courage varies with the individual, 
but the natural tendency in that direction 
can be improved like piano playing and polite 
conversation. It is a more desirable accom- 
plishment for a man than either of these. 

It was Lord Brook who conducted me to 
Ypres. I imagined Lord Brook had been too 
comfortably situated in the world to submit 
to the discomforts of regular army life, but 
he is a soldier by choice and has hardly 
missed a ruction in twenty years. He was 
in Greece in '97, in South Africa in 1900, and 
as war correspondent with the Russians against 
Japan. 

I have always thought the word "debo- 
nair" belonged in novels, preferably of the 
historical sort, but it fits Brook, and I can- 
not otherwise describe him without many 
words. He now commands a brigade of 
Canadians, and I will assure my neighbors 



WITH THE BRITISH 31 

on the north that their boys will have every 
comfort, yes, every luxury which a war forty 
miles from Paris can afford, and that when 
fighting comes they will be directed not only 
with courage but with abandon. 

I left the British army, expecting to return 
after my visit to Russia. I left it very much 
in its debt, uplifted by the association of men 
who sacrifice themselves for country. I had 
been the associate of very gallant gentlemen. 



CHAPTER II 

The Emperor of Russia 

From there I travelled to Petrograd via 
Athens, Salonica, Nish, Sofia, and Bucharest. 
This trip was particularly interesting, as it 
brought me into direct contact with the peo- 
ples and personages of those turbulent States, 
whose activities brought on — although, of 
course, they did not cause — the great War. 
The information I gathered on the journey 
forms the basis of the chapter on the cause 
of the war printed as an appendix. 

I arrived in Petrograd early in April and 
presented my letters to the Baron Schilling, 
Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, who 
made an appointment for me to meet his 
Chief the following day. 

I was greatly interested to meet this leading 
Diplomat of the world, Mr. Sergius Sazonoff, 

32 



THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA 33 

as I had, of course, read all of his despatches 
in the published White Books, and in common 
with others had been impressed by his im- 
mediate grasp of the situation presented by 
Austria's first demands upon Servia. 

Shaw did not exaggerate when he stated 
that if Sazonoff' s advice had been followed 
by the Entente Powers, war might have been 
averted. 

Mr. Sazonoff is a product of the Russian 
Diplomatic system whereby candidates for 
the Diplomatic Service must satisfactorily 
pass the course of the diplomatic school. 
Afterwards they are sent on mission to differ- 
ent countries and the younger men are moved 
from post to post so as to become acquainted 
with the different peoples of the civilized 
world. Thus it is that whomsoever is chosen 
as Minister for Foreign Affairs is not only 
thoroughly grounded in international law but 
has a first-hand knowledge of all the countries 
with whom he has relations. 

I was quite ready to find, as I did, that Mr. 
Sazonoff was much better acquainted with 



34 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

the situation in the countries through which 
I had just passed than I was, but I was not 
prepared for the extent of his knowledge of 
American conditions. Later, when we dis- 
cussed the causes of the Republican landslide 
in Chicago in the mayoralty election, I was 
surprised again. 

Mr. Sazonoff was especially emphatic in 
explaining the opportunities now open in 
Russia for American trade. Germany, he 
said, had long acted as a middleman between 
Russia and the rest of the world. Patrioti- 
cally, German middlemen preferred German 
manufacturers, and when they found it neces- 
sary to purchase their materials for the Rus- 
sian market were clever in allotting to them- 
selves the greater part of the difference be- 
tween the actual cost of production and the 
highest price that the consumer could be 
forced to pay. 

Russia, he said, is almost entirely an agri- 
cultural country and by the instinct of its 
people, its political system, and the state of 
its natural resources, must remain almost 



THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA 35 

purely agricultural for a long time. The 
Government wishes the largest possible mar- 
ket for Russian buyers. It is particularly 
anxious to prevent any one country from 
obtaining the same commercial ascendancy 
over it as Germany had before the war. 

I am convinced that the Russian Govern- 
ment will go a long way to meet America, 
but it cannot carry the whole burden of 
diplomatic negotiation. For instance, Russia 
is willing to make a new commercial treaty 
with the United States, but the American 
business men must take it upon themselves to 
see that the American Government meets the 
Russian advances. 

Russia will do fully her share towards es- 
tablishing direct steamer lines between Rus- 
sian ports and America and will protect 
American shippers in Harbor Rights and 
Railroad Rates, but the American exporters 
must equal the business acumen of their 
competitors. They must make up their 
packages according to Russian measures and 
weights, they must adapt themselves to the 
Russian terms of payment. 



36 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The largest market in the world is open 
to us, but we must make the necessary effort 
to get it. 

Typewritten letters in general terms will 
not obtain any business, nor can a drummer 
with a trunk full of samples and a grip full 
of cigars expect any orders. Permanent 
Agencies must be established, such as the 
Singer Manufacturing Company has estab- 
lished. Probably, before any large part of 
Russian trade can be obtained we must 
have a change on the part of the Gov- 
ernment attitude to permit business men 
to cooperate in the extension of foreign 
markets. 

It was Mr. Sazonoff who arranged that I 
should be presented to the Emperor, to tell 
him directly my impressions of the war on 
the western front. Accordingly, the Court 
Chamberlain sent a notice to the American 
Ambassador stating that I was to wear full 
evening dress with white necktie, to take 
the one o'clock train to Tsarskoie Selo and 
return train at three-seven. 



THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA 37 

The train started on time and shortly after 
the conductor came for the tickets. 

He was preceded and followed by a gen- 
darme. 

Looking out of the window, I saw a separate 
track on a separate embankment. On each 
side of it and on the left of our train many 
sentries were walking and every hundred 
yards gendarmes were stationed. The gen- 
darmes saluted our train, but the sentries, 
who were trudging in thick snow on each side 
of the track instead of walking the ties, paid 
no attention as we passed. 

Gilded church domes came into view and 
we drew into the station of Tsarskoie Selo. 
A footman dressed in imperial red with a cloak 
of the same color trimmed at the bottom with a 
broad ribbon upon which many eagles spread 
double heads and golden wings against a black 
background picked my silk hat out of the 
crowd and asked if I were Mr. " Cormick." 

That fact admitted, he led me to a 
brougham drawn by two handsome bays and 
driven by another figure in royal red, gold, 



38 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

and black. Red, gold, and black hats were 
on the men's heads. 

The footman wore his hat fore and aft, 
but the coachman's peaks were on either 
side to denote that royalty was not in the 
carriage. 

The gates of the royal grounds were open, 
and we drove up a medium incline to the steps 
of the right wing of the palace, a building 
somewhat longer than the White House but 
similar in appearance. 

A confusing number of police saluted as I 
climbed the twelve steps to the palace door, 
which was opened by an official, again in royal 
red, but wearing a headdress that was neither 
turban nor hat, narrow where it circled his 
brow; higher it increased to the size of a sofa 
cushion. 

A footman took my things, insisting upon 
my coat before my hat. 

A dozen other men stood bareheaded in 
various garbs. I had no time to note the 
character of their attire, but was conscious 
of a predominance of heavy beards as I was 



THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA 39 

ushered up a short stair to the waiting-room 
on the right. 

It was then twenty minutes to two, so I 
had time to look around the room. Beside 
the door was a remarkable portrait of a 
beautiful woman whom I took to be the 
Czarina. 

The background of the portrait was of a 
pearly gray, and the frame of carved silver 
reflected the same pearly hue. Next in the 
corner came a fireplace in which a fire had 
recently burned out. On the adjoining wall 
were hung two oil paintings of a little king 
and his court. In the first he was held aloft 
in the arms of a soldier in green. In the 
second he was standing dressed in light blue 
at the top of a stone staircase and receiving 
the salute of the same soldier. 

The presence of a respectful cardinal in 
both pictures and the clothes of king and 
courtiers pointed out that the boyhood of 
Louis XIV was depicted. Between the two 
pictures was a painting of peasants sickling 
the golden grain. Beside the door to the 



40 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

audience room was a water-color of a steam- 
boat navigating a crooked river, and a map of 
the stream, the whole, I suppose, illustrat- 
ing a distant possession. 

At the end were two French windows and 
between them a steel engraving of the Em- 
peror's father presented to "their Majesties" 
by the students of Paris. 

Here I was struck by the care taken to regu- 
late the temperature of the palace. Outside 
the double windows were hung thermom- 
eters. In the room was still another ther- 
mometer. The thermometer outside regis- 
tered 8° Centigrade, those between the double 
windows 12°, and the one in the room 15°. 

I was just taking in a picture of a death-bed 
scene in Spain, — probably the death of a 
king, the presence of many candles, priests, 
and knee-breeched courtiers seemed to indi- 
cate, — when my eyes lit upon two horse's 
hoofs upon a near-by desk. 

Investigation showed that one was shod 
with the ordinary horseshoe and the other 
was a shoe built with a sliding joint, apparently 



THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA 41 

a humane contrivance which the Czar was 
investigating. 

In the centre of the room was a regular re- 
ception-room table covered with books. One 
was a present commemorating a visit to 
Rheims ! 

Another concerned hydraulic engineering, 
a third related to military automobiles, so the 
pictures showed. 

All were printed in Russian, so my attention 
wandered to a large carved egg-shaped decora- 
tion in the middle of the table, to the Turkish 
carpet on the floor, to the dark oak panels 
on the walls. 

As the clock struck two, the door opened, 
and first one and then another officer entered. 

Both were in scarlet uniform, both wore 
many overlapped gold medals, both stood as 
straight as ramrods. 

Both were so utterly foreign to anything 
my life knew and yet so perfectly at home here 
that I felt for a moment as Marco Polo must 
have felt in the great and strange court of 
China. 



42 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The first of these apparitions bowed gravely 
without speaking, but the second, to my in- 
tense surprise, said in the most perfect English, 
"I cannot remember just what year it was 
your father left us." 

I was saved the embarrassment of admit- 
ting I was equally uncertain, when the man 
with the enormous headdress who had first 
received me at the palace, opened the farther 
door and addressed me in, I am sure, excel- 
lent Russian. "The Emperor is waiting" ex- 
plained the English scholar, and as neither he 
nor his companion offered to move, I walked 
through the door alone. 

The Emperor was standing at the farther 
window of a room similar in every respect 
to the one I had left, except that there was 
a large black-oak writing desk against the 
farther wall and no table in the centre. With 
a "I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Mc- 
Cormick," he walked forward and shook 
hands. 

Why describe a so much photographed and 
portraited man ? 



THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA 43 

One feature, however, was so striking as to 
demand comment. He had the largest eyes 
I have ever seen in living mortal. He asked 
pleasantly about my father, expressed pleas- 
ure that an American newspaper man had 
come to seek the truth about the war. 

In reply to a direct question he said that 
he had no doubt the Grand Duke would 
allow me to see the extreme front. 

One significant thing he said, — "The war 
was very sudden and very unexpected." 

I knew that my time was short, and I was 
busy trying to live up to the standard of a 
justly celebrated local room. I noticed the 
hair was thinning at the crown, that it was 
only slightly gray, the complexion clear with 
health, the beard brushed somewhat wider 
than the earlier pictures, suggesting a Slavic 
style. The olive uniform with a colonel's 
insignia was covered with many little loops to 
hook medals in, but the only medal worn was 
strange to me. The trousers were of dark 
blue with a red stripe and the knee boots were 
blackened but not shined. A complimentary 



44 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

reference to the British army drew my atten- 
tion to the fact that his accent was less 
marked than that of former King Edward VII. 

The interview had only proceeded this far 
when a pretty girl popped her head in the 
door behind the Emperor and said in all prob- 
ability — the language being Russian — that 
luncheon was ready. The Emperor said, "I 
am very sorry I must go now," which, as he did 
not move, was taken to mean that the visitor 
must take his departure. 

Two doors connecting with the anteroom 
had been closed, which I believe was not an 
accident or coincidence, but a part of the 
imperial formula designed so that a visitor 
might back out of the royal presence, turn 
between the doors and walk forward into the 
waiting-room. The gorgeous gentlemen-in- 
waiting had disappeared but the small army 
of attendants stood in the hall. The hat was 
handed first to the visitor, then the coat, and 
last the cane. Erect on the box sat the coach- 
men of the imperial carriage, but as the news- 
paper man passed into the station his trained 



THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA 45 

eye did not fail to detect that the footman 
was counting the tip which custom has de- 
creed is due the man who rides before the 
guest of Majesty. 

I lunched in the station restaurant. As 
the menu was written in Russian and the 
waiter could not understand me, I marked 
four dishes at random. The waiter brought 
two kinds of caviar, a cheese sandwich, and a 
bottle of quass. I was somewhat upset at 
the collection, but reflecting that it was an 
order suitable to a man wearing a dress suit 
at three p.m. ate it and took the three-seven 
train back to Petrograd. 



CHAPTER III 

The Grand Duke 

The night after my presentation I took 
the train to the town where the Grand Duke 
was then maintaining his Headquarters and 
found myself within the Russian Lines. 

Hotel life in Petrograd is very much like 
hotel life in New York or Chicago, and 
Petrograd itself is very little different from 
Paris or Berlin or Stockholm. It is a cosmo- 
politan city like New York, and like New 
York as much representative of the foreign 
elements in the country as of the country 
itself. 

The arrival at Headquarters was my first 
entry into entirely Russian atmosphere. It 
was also an augury of the pleasant times to 
follow, for while I was gathering together 
my outfit consisting of, among other things, 







The Grand Duke Nicolas, Commander-in-Chief 



THE GRAND DUKE 47 

a camp bed, rubber boots, and fur overcoat, 

— only the last of which I ever used in 
Russia, — a young officer arrived and in a 
moment took possession of me and all my 
possessions. This officer became my chief 
friend and companion during my whole stay 
in Russia. 

When I first saw him and learned that he 
was the aide-de-camp of General Yanous- 
kevitz, noted his Oriental appearance, and 
heard him addressed as "Mon Prinz," I as- 
sumed that he was a Japanese Prince attached 
to the Russian Army, through some system 
of military interchange. It was not until 
some days later that I learned his actual 
identity, which is very much more interest- 
ing. 

Dimitri Toundoutoff is the hereditary 
prince of the Kalmuk race, which has been 
incorporated in the Russian Empire for over 
two hundred years. 

The native customs and religions have not 
been interfered with, and Prince Toundoutoff 

— conveniently for him — is not only the 



48 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Prince but the God of his people. From 
early times his family entered heartily into 
the Russian regime. They have been for 
two hundred years, father and son, officers 
in the same Cavalry regiment of the Russian 
Imperial Guard. The father of the present 
Prince rose to the rank of General Governor 
in the Russian service, one of the highest 
points of distinction in the Empire. 

Toundoutoff was one of the Russian team 
in the Riding Contest in Vienna that won the 
first prize a few months before the war. He 
told me that the announcement of Russians 
winning the first prize was received by the 
audience in absolute silence, but the second 
and third prize winners were cheered to the 
echo, — an indication of the Viennese public 
opinion before the assassination of the Arch- 
duke Francis Ferdinand which was missed 
by the foreign press. He is also the proud 
— but modest — owner of a sword of honor 
received for carrying important despatches 
under heavy fire during one of the desperate 
battles in East Prussia. 



THE GRAND DUKE 49 

He was a strong example to me of the 
beneficial influence of military training upon 
young men born to powerful positions. It 
could have been no fun for him to take around 
the Army a total stranger, — ten years older 
than himself and to whom he was not united 
by any tie of race or interest, — to get his 
railroad tickets, his hotel accommodations, to 
rise sometimes at dawn, go on trips for twenty- 
four hours, returning the following dawn see- 
ing sights that were not new to him, to undergo 
from time to time more or less danger of shell 
and rifle fire for no purpose which could 
interest or benefit him; above all, drag 
around a heavy trunk filled with moving 
picture equipment, sometimes in contraven- 
tion of the railroad regulations ; but never at 
any time did I perceive in him any indication 
that he was performing a distasteful duty. 
In explaining Russian customs to a stranger 
he was extremely tactful and on all occasions 
treated me as though I were a military 
superior of his own nation. 

Such is the man who conducted me in one 



50 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

of the Headquarters automobiles to the train 
which served as Headquarters, and it was he 
who introduced me to General Yanouskevitz, 
Chief of Staff of all the Armies of Russia. 

General Yanouskevitz, at the age of forty- 
four, holds the second military position under 
the Czar. This high rank he owes to great 
native ability developed under the eye of the 
Russian Emperor himself, for as a young 
officer he was in the same regiment as the 
heir to the throne. He was not sent to Man- 
churia during the Japanese War, so that unless 
he was in some border skirmish he had never 
taken part in war before he received his 
present high position. 

Of the most polished manners, sitting at 
his desk upon which were photographs of his 
wife and children, he made a different figure 
from the prevalent military idea presented 
by the equestrian statue. 

When, however, he took down a map to 
suggest an itinerary for my travels through 
the armies and ran over their positions and 
movements, it was plain to see that he had a 




General Yanouskevitch 



THE GRAND DUKE 51 

natural turn for military dispositions, just 
as some people have good heads for mathe- 
matics, some have the art of expression, and 
some are natural athletes. 

During his conversation he told me of the 
German system of strategic farmhouses. For 
years, he said, the strategic points — not only 
in East Prussia but in Poland — had been 
bought by German farmers and paid for 
through the military appropriation. Dwellings 
were erected that overlooked long stretches 
of territory in the direction of Russia, they 
were built with thick fort-like walls on the 
eastern front with small loophole windows, 
but with wide doors and windows and with 
thin walls towards the west. Many of 
these houses were connected by underground 
telephones, so that in the early stages of the 
war farmers could telephone from within the 
Russian lines to the German Headquarters. 
Early in the war Russian batteries carefully 
concealed would be struck by the first shell 
from a German gun. 

The picture printed in this volume is a 



52 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

good likeness, and is chosen — as the one 
shown of the Czar — because it gives a 
particular expression which, to me at least, 
indicated the Slav, or possibly the East. I 
had been with him perhaps an hour and had 
begun to feel the enormous admiration for 
the Russian military which was to grow on 
me throughout my whole stay, when he said 
it was time to present me to the Grand Duke. 

After seeing how able was the Chief of 
Staff I was perfectly ready to find in the Grand 
Duke, Commander-in-Chief, a figure head, 
but if I had come even with a fixed notion of 
that kind, I would have been jarred out of it 
in the first moment of conversation. 

The man who rose to meet me was taller 
than I, exceedingly spare, but with the hand- 
clasp of a young man twice his weight. 

Nicolas Nicolaiovitch Romanoff, grandson of 
the Emperor Alexander I, and cousin of the 
present Czar, is in his fifty-ninth year. In 
appearance he is ten years younger, due, I 
suppose, to his fondness for out-of-door exer- 
cise which his position allows him to indulge. 



THE GRAND DUKE 53 

There was no question of my telling him 
what I wanted to do. He had passed on that 
subject, 

He asked a few questions about the morale 
of the English and French Armies and then 
led the way to the dining car. On the way 
he introduced me to "mon frere," the Grand 
Duke Peter of Russia. 

History will not do justice to this charm- 
ing man, who may be compared to Aaron 
bearing up the arms of Moses. 

He is not commander-in-chief. He is not 
even a member of the Staff. He lives in the 
confinement of the train on its wayside track 
with no duties to occupy his mind. Victory 
will erect no statues of him in enduring bronze. 
But who will say that he has not played a 
valuable part in the work, supporting his 
great brother in his trials, and spreading an 
atmosphere of kindliness, the Russian per- 
sonality, among the overworked Staff and 
unoccupied attaches. 

I surprised a fraternal scene one day when 
the army was retreating from Tarnow to 



54 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Peremysl. At risk of stretching hospitality 
I must relate it. 

The Grand Duke Peter was sitting in the 
shade of the Headquarters building reading 
when the Commander-in-Chief came out and 
started towards his armchair some fifty feet 
in the sun. Immediately the Grand Duke 
Peter sprang up, brought the Commander his 
cane, and then carried the chair to a place 
in the shade. I do not recount this as a 
remarkable thing for a Grand Duke to do, 
not being familiar with their habits ; I call 
attention to the personal devotion of one 
brother to another. Jealousy is a microbe 
that knows no station. History and the 
experience of all of us tells the rarity of such 
a spirit as I saw revealed. 

At table the Commander-in-Chief sits at 
one side of a dining-car table facing the room. 
Opposite to him are the chief of Staff and the 
Headquarters chaplain. A particularly dis- 
tinguished guest has a position on the Grand 
Duke's right. General Sullivainoff, captor 
of Peremysl, had it while I was at the Head- 
quarters the first time. 




M M 



THE GRAND DUKE 55 

On the Grand Duke's left is the table of 
the Grand Duke Peter, with General Williams, 
General La Guiche, English and French 
military attaches, and Prince Galitzin. Next 
in precedence come the Prince Oldenbourg, 
brother-in-law of the Czar, with the chief of 
tactics, the Japanese and the Belgian attaches, 
both Generals. The fourth and last table in 
the Commander's party is occupied by the 
Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlo witch, the Major 
General representing Montenegro, and the 
Colonel representing Servia. 

Here as a compliment to America I was 
placed, my commission as Colonel A.D.C. 
to the Governor of Illinois making me junior 
to all the General Attaches. 

Beyond a partition were six tables of Staff 
officers, the senior being the Cossack Gen- 
eral commanding a regiment of the Guards 
attached to Headquarters. 

The officers breakfast at different hours 
according to their duties. Lunch is at 12.30. 
The company assembles and waits standing. 

The Commander-in-Chief enters, followed 



56 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

by the Grand Duke Peter, the chief of Staff, 
and guests in order of rank. The chaplain 
blesses the chief, and the chief kisses the chap- 
lain's hand. Then he walks through the 
car, shaking hands with all those he sees for 
the first time that morning. He does this 
again at dinner at 7.30 with perfect memory 
for those he has and has not seen. Con- 
versation is generally confined among the 
officers at each table, with interruptions when 
the Grand Duke addresses some polite remark 
to one of his guests. 

Upon the day of my arrival I was pouring 
Narzan water into a glass half full of claret 
when I heard a deep voice say, "Ce n'est pas 
bien que vous faites la." My eyes were on 
my glass, but I had no more doubt about the 
remark being addressed to me than twenty 
years ago when the Rev. Endicott Peabody 
would surprise me in some school occupation 
not according to his ideas. Upon looking 
up I was told that Narzan water and claret 
mixed badly. 

This instance will give you an idea of the 



THE GRAND DUKE 57 

Grand Duke's personal care for his guests. 
At Christmas the whole staff had roast beef 
and plum pudding in honor of General Wil- 
liams. 

Tea is served from 4 to 5.30 and from 10 
till 11. These repasts are strictly informal. 

The Commander-in-Chief sits at table until 
he sees that every one has finished, when he 
rises abruptly and strides into his office, 
followed by the Staff officers. 

The work of the Staff is continuous, of 
course, but the hours are made as regular 
as possible, and opportunity for exercise 
is deliberately afforded, so that the force will 
maintain its high state of efficiency during 
the long war that is expected. 

The work of the attaches is irregular. 
For days they may have no occupation. 
Then they are given important despatches, 
and for days and nights they have no rest. 
Given a mission, they must perform it or die, 
and not a few have done the latter. Among 
the former is Prince Cantacuzene, who is 
known to Americans as the grandson-in-law 



58 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

of General Grant. He was desperately 
wounded at the outbreak of war, but is back 
at the front ready for more. Headquarters 
life would appear to be tedious for these men, 
but they get their excitement in such allo- 
pathic doses that a few days of quiet are wel- 
come. 

It was the season for the Russian wood- 
cock, a bird of the partridge species as large 
as a turkey, and this was the subject of most 
of the conversation. The bird is only shot 
at sunrise, and my eye detected dust on the 
Commander's boots in the early morning. 

His pictures show a stern face, and stern 
it is in repose, but my recollection will be of a 
man in a laughing exchange with his brother, 
or a smiling conversation with one of his 
guests. 

Once I saw him in a fury. It was the day 
I came to say good by. He had just heard of 
a seventeen-year-old sister of mercy who had 
been assaulted by an entire raiding detail 
and who was then suffering from peritonitis 
and syphilis. 



THE GRAND DUKE 59 

His aids, while sharing his feelings, were 
awed by their intensity. 

He strode up to me as I approached, saying, 
"J'ai une priere particuliere pour vous." 
It was that the perpetration of this horror be 
made known to the world. 

The longest talk I had with the Grand Duke 
was after my journey through the Armies, 
when he asked particularly about what I had 
seen of the food the men were eating and of 
the sanitary arrangements. I was very glad 
to be able to make a satisfactory report as 
to both. The Grand Duke then talked about 
the War, about the difficulty from the lack of 
railroads, of the advantages which came from 
the simple style of living of the Russians, 
whereby the men needed less equipment and 
commissariat than their adversaries. To a 
man of his temperament Headquarters far 
from the front is galling. He suffered acutely 
at losses which must be suffered to make di- 
versions. 

I consider him the great soldier that the 
war produced. Certainly he is the unknown 



60 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

quantity that threw out the forty years of 
methodical calculations of the German Gen- 
eral Staff. 

In the first month of the war he struck 
down Austrians with one hand and with the 
other dragged back the Prussians from the 
gates of Paris. 

He has always been actively employed in 
military affairs, in the cavalry arm. Why he 
was not sent to Manchuria I do not know 
and cannot imagine. 

However, after its conclusion he became 
under the Czar the leader in military re- 
organization, working in perfect accord with 
the Czar's selection as chief of Staff, General 
Yanouskevitch. 

I have an idea that while the Grand Duke 
built up the Army and taught it battle tactics, 
General Yanouskevitch, who had been chief 
instructor in the War College, worked out the 
plans of campaigns, the details of the great 
strategic moves that have made the Russians 
the dictators of the course of the war since 
the middle of August. 





m 

\ 

•m. *•• V 1 




^ 







THE GRAND DUKE 61 

Time past, those in military authority 
realized the serious hardship imposed by lack 
of railroads in Poland and called for remedy. 
The war came before this work was begun. 

Thus it is that while in the campaigns 
Germany has had the use of all the railroads 
that military foresight could devise, Russia 
has had less even than was needed for serving 
the territory in time of peace. 

All summer and fall, the Kaiser's objective 
was to crush France, the Grand Duke's to 
pull back the attack until time and a plethora 
of factories should permit France and Eng- 
land to supply the serious military deficiencies 
which the war discovered. 

Look up the dates of the Russian offensives 
and you will find that they come at the 
moments when the Franco-English armies 
are in critical condition. 

Remember that these offensives involved 
the advance of hundreds of thousands of 
men into positions where they could be 
attacked by greater numbers, and you will 
realize on how gigantic a scale Nicolas Nicolai- 



62 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

ovitch makes his diversions. Only once before 
in history has war been played on a similar 
grand and self-sacrificing scale. That was 
when Grant pinned the Army of Virginia to 
the ground by the assaults of that under his 
direct command and turned the flank by the 
advance of the armies of the Cumberland and 
Tennessee under Sherman. 

Once the reader has realized the fact that 
at the Marne and again at the Yser the Ger- 
man attack was stopped by the Russian 
advance, and he will appreciate whose initia- 
tive has governed the war. 

In support of his allies, the Grand Duke 
has made two offensives against Germany 
and has suffered large local defeats, the second 
less than the first. 

Hindenburg has undertaken two offensives 
against Russia to cripple her long enough to 
get time to finish France. The first time he 
was glad to get across the frontier with his 
army, the second he met a far more bloody 
repulse than Cold Harbor. 



CHAPTER IV 

Warsaw 

At the Great Headquarters called by the 
Russians "Stavka" I remained several days 
waiting for the cinema machine which I was 
given permission to use to present an accu- 
rate picture of the Russian Army to America. 
When this "modern war correspondent" 
arrived I was despatched en tour, my first 
destination being Warsaw, where I was asked 
to photograph a soldier named Ignatoff Panat- 
suk, whose ears had been clipped with scissors 
by German staff officers to compel him to 
reveal the whereabouts of the Russian forces. 

The train we boarded was one running 
from Moscow to Warsaw. Service was dis- 
arranged by the war. There were none of 
the luxurious state sleeping cars nor "wagon 
lits," but there were compartments for every 

63 



64 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

two people, — the seats made up into beds, 
and our overcoats had been made with an 
eye to their use as blankets. 

There were signs of war on every hand, — 
trains of troops going to the front, trains of 
prisoners going to prison camps, but what 
impressed me more was the number of civilian 
passengers. Certainly the war had made 
less impression here than upon the civil popu- 
lation in France. 

I arrived at Warsaw in the afternoon. 
The surprise I felt in the first few minutes 
grew through my entire stay into a feeling 
of almost boundless admiration. 

A few weeks before I had found Paris 
deserted. The German Army was nearer to 
Warsaw than it was to Paris, and had been 
much nearer than it had ever approached to 
the French capital. 

I expected to find Warsaw desolate. I 
knew that there would be movements of 
troops, policemen on the street corners, and 
watchmen in the houses. I was sure the 
streets would be empty. 



WARSAW 65 

The sight that met me was of a city living 
as in time of peace. The streets were as 
crowded as in any other metropolis, and as 
rules of the road are unknown in Poland, 
they were twice as congested. 

However, it is very hard to believe things 
can be different from what you expected them 
to be, so when that night I found a party of 
fifty men of Warsaw dining at the Sports- 
men's Club, I put them down as property 
owners who had sent their families away and 
had remained behind to look after their 
affairs, not appreciating that it is customary 
in that country for the men to dine together 
very much as it is customary with us for them 
to lunch together. 

Later at a reception when I met the ladies 
of Warsaw playing bridge not many miles 
from the firing line I felt my first real thrill, 
but when the following day I found these 
same ladies in the hospitals, not superin- 
tending and directing and fussing, but doing 
the actual work of nursing, handing the in- 
struments to the doctors with their own 



66 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

hands, bandaging ghastly wounds, when I 
saw one woman sitting at the bedside of a 
dying Mongol boy and expending a passion 
of tenderness to save that strange life, I 
realized that I had come upon something 
that was worth travelling twelve thousand 
miles to see. No one who has visited Warsaw 
in time of war can doubt women's mission in 
the world. 

If you turn to the map, you will see that 
Warsaw is the centre of a semicircle of fight- 
ing armies. From it radiate railroads to 
several battle fronts, and hence into it are 
brought a large proportion of the wounded 
in this greatest of wars. 

I wish many American Red Cross officials 
could come to Warsaw and see how it rose 
to meet the cataclysm. 

Of course, the existing hospitals were 
totally insufficient to meet the demands for 
aid. The citizens of Warsaw immediately 
organized a hospital with two thousand beds 
under the direction of Madame De Bispang. 
They took the Cadet barracks, put in elec- 



WARSAW 67 

trie light throughout, rounded all the corners 
of the rooms and halls, painted white the walls, 
collected cots and linen and blankets. They 
equipped in the most complete manner ten 
operating rooms for major operations, two 
more for gangrenous cases, one for dentistry, 
and one for operations on nose and throat. 
They found surgeons to operate in all of 
these. They installed a complete bacterio- 
logical laboratory, and in it are preparing 
serum. Cholera serum was being made whilst 
I was there, in anticipation of the possible 
epidemic with the coming of summer. Never 
at any time have they been short of anaes- 
thetics or antiseptics. 

Another hospital that I went through was 
that of the Grand Duchess Maria Pavolova, 
also completely and scientifically equipped 
throughout, and there are many more, the 
largest being a hospital of six thousand beds, 
as needs must when a single battle furnished 
thirty thousand wounded Russians alone. 

Those with large houses to give have cheer- 
fully turned them into hospitals. At Vilanof , 



68 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

the former home of the King Jan Sobieski, 
Count Branitski maintains forty beds; a 
relative, the Countess Branitska, opened her 
city residence to wounded officers and later to 
wounded soldiers, living herself in a lodge 
next door. The Countess Joseph Potocka 
nursed wounded soldiers in her home, while 
her two sons were on Red Cross duty at the 
front. And these are not all, but merely a 
representative few. Under the same skilful 
management evacuation hospitals have been 
created in the railroad stations, where the 
less seriously wounded are taken from the 
trains to rest on their way to their final 
lazarettes. So absorbed are these people in 
their work of mercy that they hardly heed 
the daily bombs from air men — baby killers 
they call them. 

Anybody would have been surprised at 
such an extraordinary accomplishment, but 
I was the more surprised because I had heard 
in the hotel lobbies in Petrograd a lot of 
rumors of a shocking lack of hospital facili- 
ties and attendants. Such stories, I suppose, 



WARSAW 69 

are current in hotel lobbies back of all the 
battle lines and receive ready credulity from 
those who are unable or unwilling to ascertain 
the truth. 

In addition to all this there are committees 
large and committees small from the central 
organization in Warsaw to the little hamlet 
committees in rear of the battle line. 

How much work there is for these com- 
mittees to do is hard to explain to peace- 
blessed America. We have our unemploy- 
ment problems, but our unemployed are 
largely of the transient class well able by 
nature and practice to look out for them- 
selves, but here the idle are largely land- 
owners or tenant farmers, at the least driven 
from their homes by stress of war and quite 
unable to fend for themselves under new 
conditions. 

Food must be found for them and roofs and 
work. It is heartbreaking labor for the com- 
mittees, but it is invaluable discipline and 
experience for the future. 

After witnessing for several days these 



70 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

monuments of mercy I was delighted to learn 
from Chamberlain-Squire Lysyczynski, aide- 
de-camp to General Governor EngalitcherT, 
that arrangements were in progress to re- 
store Home Rule to Poland. 

The election for municipal offices of War- 
saw was about to be held while I was there, 
and ways were being discussed of organizing 
a Polish Parliament, even while hostile armies 
were fighting on her soil, and while a portion 
of it was occupied by the enemy. 

On Poland's past I am no historian and 
certainly not a critic, but I do not doubt — 
and no one who has seen the power of organi- 
zation developed in caring for the wounded 
can doubt — Poland's power of self-govern- 
ment. 

It is in the hospitals that the horrors of 
war are found. I do not know how the people 
of Warsaw have stood them for so many 
months. I could not have done so. 

Once I was taken to the bedside of a patient 
who spoke English. He said that he had 
worked in the Steel Mills in South Chicago. 



WARSAW 71 

Thinking to cheer him up, I said we would 
be glad to see him in Chicago after the war, 
and he replied, — "Oh, I can never go back 
to America." "Why?" said I, and in an- 
swer he lifted the bedcovers, showing two 
stumps where his legs had been and over his 
face came an expression that I would not 
describe if I could. 

There is nothing that money and in- 
genuity can do that has not been done by 
the people of Warsaw for these wrecked 
lives. The most modern artificial limbs are 
supplied to all who can use them, and the 
pleasure of those simple people in finding 
that they will be able to move again is pathetic. 

Harrowing as are all these sights, the blind 
are the worst. One man I saw and stopped 
spellbound at his misery. I was told that I 
might photograph him, as he would not 
know it. Nothing could have made me do 
so. It is enough that his expression should 
be seared upon my memory for ever. 

Oh ! you who forbid means of defence to 
our country, what agony are you storing up 



72 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

for your countrymen who will have to fight 
without preparation and suffer without limit 
when we are invaded ! 

I made Warsaw my headquarters, motoring 
out from there to the armies. The trips 
themselves were full of interest, for they 
crossed the battle fields of the German high 
tide in September. 

By following the trenches and rifle pits 
one could get a good idea of the minor tactics, 
the size of the protections indicating how 
long any position had been occupied, the 
thickness of the graves showing the stub- 
bornness of the fight. The roads, too, were 
full of transport, artillery and Red Cross 
trains. 

Additional interest was added by our 
chauffeur. This man was selected apparently 
because he was too small for the army. 
He was not the best chauffeur in the world 
and it is possible that he was not the worst. 
He had no idea of the relation between the 
speed of vehicles and the distance between 
them. He could not reach his footbrake, but 



WARSAW 73 

that did not matter, as the brake was out of 
order all the time. 

Two things he did know : that it takes 
speed to cover long distances and that a 
staff officer's car has the right of way ; so 
whenever his engine was in shape ran a mile 
a minute, or better. 

He taught me that the danger of auto- 
mobile accidents has been greatly exagger- 
ated. He would tear past miles of terrified 
transport horses that would rear and plunge 
and threaten to back into our side of the 
road, but none ever did, although I saw one 
Siberian pony jump into an empty wagon. 

We travelled over five hundred miles to- 
gether and only had one accident, when we 
knocked over a carriage and two officers. 
The collision was so outrageously the fault 
of our chauffeur and might easily have 
proved serious that I looked for an outburst 
of temper. None came. It would have been 
a confession that the collision had disturbed 
the officers. 

Such calm seemed extreme to me, but I 



74 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

was told that it is impossible to be too 
unaffected by danger. 

Speaking of danger, — I came to know the 
chief aviator of the Warsaw camp very well. 
Before the war he was not a member of the 
aviation corps of the army, but a rich young 
man who made flying his hobby. Now he 
was able to turn his hobby to the service of 
the nation. He had frequently attacked 
hostile airmen in the sky. 

He asked me if the rich young men of 
America did not make flying a hobby with 
the same object in view. When I replied in 
the negative, he asked me, "Why?" I 
hesitated for a while, and then with a very 
red face replied, "It is considered too dan- 
gerous." 

There were soldiers in Warsaw from all 
parts of the Empire and in different kinds of 
attire. One night we found at table one 
Pole in full dress evening suit, one private 
volunteer soldier in blouse, one officer in full 
dress, Prince Toundoutoff in the field uni- 
form of the Horse Guards, one Cossack of the 



WARSAW 75 

Caucasus in flowing robe, fur cap and inlaid 
sword, one American national guardsman 
in field uniform with khaki shirt and knee- 
high surveyor boots. Somebody thought of 
a photographer to make a picture of this 
company of extremes, and I sent for my 
campaign hat to make the types more dis- 
tinct. Everybody refused to believe it could 
be part of the uniform, calling it a Panama, 
and insisted that I should not make a joke of 
a picture that would be of permanent in- 
terest ! 

In Warsaw I met the famous war corre- 
spondents Stanley Washburn and John Bass, 
and also the American military attache 
Lieut. Sherman Miles. They were the only 
Americans in evidence and as a consequence 
the reputation of Americans is exceedingly 
good there. 

Warsaw is a delightful city inhabited by 
charming people and I am going back there 
after the war is over — or before. 



CHAPTER V 

On the Rawka Battle Line 

The following are accounts of two trips 
from Warsaw to the Rawka front written 
at the time. I reproduce them here, as they 
were written then "to save the growth of 
time." 

The size and number of shells fired in one's 
direction in a given battle have a growth as 
steady as a century plant. Only the dis- 
tances by which they missed one shrink ! 

From these articles perhaps may be gath- 
ered the psychological effect of living in the 
atmosphere of war upon a "civilian soldier" 
of rather phlegmatic temperament. 

General Smirnoff 

Saturday, April 18th, was a hodgepodge 
day. It began with a visit to the castle of 

76 



ON THE RAWKA BATTLE LINE 77 

Vilanof built by the Polish king, John Sobieski, 
who saved Vienna from the Turks. Here 
Count Braniski conducts a private hospital 
for wounded men, among whom is a Polish 
peasant sixty years of age, shot through 
the breast by direction of a Prussian officer 
for objecting to the burning of his home. 
He was left where he fell, and remained two 
days and two nights until the Russian ad- 
vance from Warsaw. Better for him if he 
had died where he lay, as under the circum- 
stances of his life tuberculosis is almost in- 
evitable, and besides, an arm paralyzed from 
the wound will keep him from the cultivation 
of his little farm, whereby he earns his bread. 
From Vilanof on through fields sown thick 
with graves, where the decisive battle of the 
Fall campaign was fought. On past line 
after line of covered trench and breastworks, 
past labyrinths of wire entanglements, the 
new forts, stronger than stone or concrete. 
On over the road worn deep in ruts by Ger- 
man heavy cannon, past rows of trees stripped 
naked of their branches to make artillery 



78 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

cover. They looked so queer and bare in 
the morning sunlight that I stopped to pho- 
tograph them and the crowds of Polish refu- 
gees, who find in road repairing much needed 
work while the stranger furrows their lands 
with intrenching ploughs. And so we came 
to a pleasant country house, remarkable only 
in an astounding number of telephone wires 
running from an open window. This is the 
headquarters of the second army, inherited 
in all its thoroughness of equipment from the 
beaten enemy. 

From the road it seemed as though the 
general had been careful to find comfortable 
quarters, but an inside inspection showed that 
the entire house was given up to the business 
of the army and that the general in command 
contented himself with one small combined 
bed and sitting room. 

In this unpretentious salon he received us 
and then led the way into the flower garden 
to show where a German aerial bomb had 
fallen a few hours before. The explosion 
had shattered the neighboring windows and 



ON THE RAWKA BATTLE LINE 79 

steel fragments had melted the pickets of 
an iron fence like cheese. The "visit" was 
about to be returned, so, after tea, we fol- 
lowed the general to the aviation field. 

Approaching this, I saw the familiar sight 
of field artillery cocked up on end as anti- 
air-craft guns. I had seen the same scheme 
at Neuve Chapelle in France, but there was 
a difference in detail of method. 

In France the trail is lowered into a hole 
and the wheels are skidded around for aim- 
ing on two small concentric iron tracks. 
Range is established by a telescopic field 
range finder. 

In Russia the cannon wheels rest on a cen- 
tral wooden platform, and, to get the requi- 
site elevation, the trail is let down into a 
circular excavation cut around the platform. 

To obtain the exactitude of range neces- 
sary for wing shooting, a "jack-knife" 
method has been devised indicative of a 
high state of originality in the Russian artil- 
lery arm. 

We were still a little early for the depar- 



80 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

ture of the bomb droppers, as the general 
planned to time their trip so that they would 
have daylight by which to aim their bombs 
and nightfall to protect their return. In 
the meantime he held a practice drill of the 
air battery, and to make the spectacle more 
realistic sent up a repaired German aero- 
plane shot down by this same battery a 
while before. 

Around sailed the airship, around the Rus- 
sian gunners swung their guns, giving evi- 
dence of the tremendous physical strength, 
which is a distinctive feature of this army. 
I stood with one of the range-finding officers 
and was impressed with the superiority of 
his contrivance over the automatic range 
finder used in France. 

As the general approached the flying 
machine, mechanics and air men alike came 
to a rigid attention. For from the adven- 
turers of the air is required the same degree of 
discipline as from the soldiers in the trenches. 

We were introduced to Poirret, the French 
Beachey, and to the famous Creusot. I 



ON THE RAWKA BATTLE LINE 81 

snapped a picture of the latter' s smiling face. 
When it reaches America, may it not appear 
as an obituary ! 

The final bombs were being loaded as we 
arrived. 

Oh ! the tenseness of that atmosphere. Six 
fine young men were starting out to kill or 
be killed. One realized how thin is the veneer 
of civilization to breathe that electrified air. 
I think the dignified old general, veteran and 
hero of many wars, would have given one 
of his stars to take that voyage. 

Poirret, the looper of loops, was plainly 
excited, but Creusot discussed engines, steer- 
ing devices, and airman's clothes with ap- 
parent unconcern, only in his eyes could be 
seen the fire that burned within. 

I wonder what occupation that gallant will 
find if he survives the war. 

Up rose the graceful destroyers, circling 
to the heights. Small targets they pre- 
sented when they turned their beaks toward 
the foe. 

We dined in Russian style, with all the 



82 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

delightful appetizers that country affords, 
and we drank in light wine to the safe return 
of the voyagers. Colonel "Billy" (Nicholas 
Billaeff, Colonel de la Garde) of the artillery 
and professor of metallurgy in peace, inter- 
preted for the general, but had little work 
to do until report came of the airmen's safe 
return. 

After dinner we left for home and found 
Warsaw dark in expectation of Zeppelin 
attack. 

In my diary of April 11th is written the 
name of a Russian general, Pierre Sakharoff, 
who gave us a day of days because of his 
friendship for America. Thank Heaven, we 
rose early that day. 

Our way lay straight west over the road 
the Germans had marched to attack War- 
saw and again on the retreat. 

They came within eight miles of the city 
and were expecting to crown a prince of 
Saxony as king when the Russian guard 
arrived — but that is history, not reminis- 
cence. 



ON THE RAWKA BATTLE LINE 83 

Down this road we came bumping in the 
German ruts and wondering whether the aero- 
plane flying high above would expend a shell 
upon so small an object as an automobile. 
It did not, and we came to the corps head- 
quarters. 

Here we met Mr. Goutschkoff, former 
chairman of the Duma, and his wife, a 
delightful pair of warriors. Mr. Goutschkoff 
gained experience fighting with the Boers, 
and his wife is a Red Cross veteran of the 
Japanese and Balkan wars. They showed 
us the corps, division, and field hospitals, 
splendid examples of medical efficiency. 

The corps hospital, in a whitewashed house, 
was complete to operating table and chloro- 
form. The division hospital had been in- 
stalled in a church, but was now in tents, 
bricks from the shell-demolished structure 
serving as a floor. Polish boys, high school 
boys we should call them, acted as orderlies, 
and women, true to their heaven-sent mis- 
sion, were patiently suffering in mind for the 
wounded in body. 



84 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

A light tramway had been constructed 
from the division hospital to the corps head- 
quarters to save the wounded the bumping 
over the roads, an indication of the care 
given to Russian wounded and also of their 
number. 

Polish peasants were being fed with the 
soldiers' food — poor victims of a war not 
theirs. 

Hospital sights are very depressing, and I 
was glad when we had finished our investi- 
gation. 

What is the strange psychology that causes 
the mind depressed by the sight of wounded 
men to be cheered by the sound of the cannon 
that wounded them, the popping corks of 
the wine of death? 

What is it causes the drunkard to gladden 
at the sight of liquor, the drug victim to smile 
at the poisonous needle? Is it that, born 
to die, we have an affinity for what destroys 
and draw back only when too late? 

Whatever the explanation, our party bright- 
ened as the guns began to sound above the 



ON THE RAWKA BATTLE LINE 85 

carriage wheels which bore us on the third 
stage of our journey. 

A shell hole blocked the road before the 
general's door, a chance visitor which had 
killed a sentry at the rear one day while the 
general was on the firing line. 

The general himself was in the garden, a 
kindly man who welcomed us with a short 
speech as representatives of the great Ameri- 
can nation, in which he has spent delightful 
hours and which he delighted to honor. The 
division was ours to command. 

A cavalry drill was arranged and a review 
of infantry. He was about to bombard a 
German sap. Yes, and if we wanted to very 
much, we could enter the trenches. But we 
must be careful. He would never forgive 
himself if we should be hurt while his guests. 
Then interested questions as to the success 
of the San Francisco exposition, and before 
we knew it we were among a sotnia of Cos- 
sack cavalry. Called sotnia from the num- 
ber sot — 100 men. 

The Cossacks are humpy looking men 



86 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

with round fur caps and sheepskin coats ? 
They never wash or shave ? Also they have 
more wives than teeth? 

Yes, I have been to Buffalo Bill's and seen 
them, too. Apparently Buffalo Bill has got 
them all. At least I have not seen any of 
that kind in Russia. 

The Russians know something about this 
reputation. When I first came to Head- 
quarters the Grand Duke asked me as a pleas- 
antry to pick out the Cossack officers. This 
was puzzling, as no one present could come 
within my preconceived opinion of them, 
least of all the three blond, close-cropped 
young men who always smiled so affably at 
my confusion. 

When the soldiers were dismounted there 
was nothing to indicate the Cossack, unless 
it was that the horses seemed too nervous to 
drill. But when they mounted and swung 
into line ! Sons of Castor and Pollux ! Noth- 
ing but international polo can equal it. 

They wheeled, and they countermarched, 
and they charged. 



ON THE RAWKA BATTLE LINE 87 

They formed a skirmish line on foot, and 
they leaped back on their mounts. I can- 
not describe it, but the cinema can — cinema, 
the modern war correspondent. 

My admiration for the horses was so un- 
bounded that an officer lent me his mount, 
a velvet-mouthed animal with a trot that one 
could either sit or rise to ; and thus we came 
to a regiment of infantry drawn up for review. 

This regiment contained 3060 men as we 
saw it. It had already lost 6000 killed and 
wounded. I wondered how many of the 
original number remained. 

The general greeted his men heartily. 

"Good morning, boys." 

"Good health to your excellency," roared 
back the regiment. 

I had already learned that the general 
loved his men. The tone of the men's reply 
showed that they loved their general. 

And how they stood at attention ! Devel- 
oping that cohesion of mind that will hold 
them together when the next great trial 
comes. 



88 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

I had a good chance to look them over as 
we rode up and down the line. I saw that 
the officers set good examples in bearing to 
their men. In particular I noticed a red- 
bearded captain holding a great curved sword, 
a splendid type. 

The regiment turned into column and, 
band leading, passed before the general. 

The Russian quick step is three and one- 
half miles an hour. The stride is slow and 
long. It gives the sense of the inevitable, 
and of those hordes which have been so often 
advertised at the expense of the remarkable 
organization and military preparation through 
which Russia, alone of the Allies, was able to 
cope with Germany at the outbreak of war. 

The men marched to their cantonments 
in the trees a furlong away, broke ranks, and 
gathered along the edge of the wood to look 
at the man with the camera and the officer 
in the strange yellow overcoat. Then I 
noticed how well their uniforms blended with 
the background. If they had taken cover, 
not a man could have been seen. 



ON THE RAWKA BATTLE LINE 89 

Still on horseback, we continued to the 
battery that was to shell the sap. I have 
seen batteries well hidden in straw stacks 
and in woods and dug into the ground, but 
this one was like a bug in a rug. Fifteen 
feet away not a gun could be seen, except 
along the line to the rear, upon which the 
sighting point was established. 

In this glade we set the moving picture 
machine to make a scenario of a Russian 
battery in action, but our picture was short; 
the second shell landed in the sap itself. 

We in the peaceful glade had seen what 
appeared to be a fire drill. Yet it had brought 
death to men and widowhood to women. 

Now we are to visit the place where the 
wine of death is spilled. A hard gallop over 
a natural bridle path, a visit to a battery of 
heavy artillery of the type the French have 
recently copied, a lighter and faster shooting 
type than the German or English, another 
little ride, and we are dismounting before a 
platoon of infantry at the edge of a wood. 

An embarrassed round-faced boy with 



90 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

sergeant's stripes and a cross of St. George 
on his chest steps forward and shouts 
a report to the general, quite drowning the 
report of rifles, which have been growing 
louder as we approach. 

An agile middle-aged colonel steps out of 
the woods like Robin Hood, and, after intro- 
ductions, we advance on foot. 

The colonel is explaining that the outbreak 
of war found him in a garrison on the Afghan- 
istan border as we reach the communication 
trenches and Thompson shouts from the rear : 

"I suppose that this is the wine cellar, 
colonel," stealing my stuff. 

Cellar of the wine of death it is, and even 
as we later proceed to the firing trench 
shuffling feet and tender hands bear to the 
rear all that was mortal of a soldier of the 
Czar. 

Ivan Ivanovitch had survived the fifty 
days' butchery from Lodz to Warsaw and 
back to the Rawka to fall before a sniper's 
bullet. 

Brave, patient, uncomplaining Ivan ! He 



ON THE RAWKA BATTLE LINE 91 

has pushed the Czar's borders from the Baltic 
to the Pacific, and now his steady walk is 
driving it to the Mediterranean Sea, this time 
to remain. 

A large army has preceded him where he 
has gone ; a larger one will follow before the 
war is over. 

But now to lunch. 

The trench winds continually to prevent 
enfilading fire and to limit the effect of a 
fortunately placed shell. Around one of the 
curves we find a cave opening to the rear. 
In the cave is a table and on the table all 
kinds of good things to eat. Caviare, sar- 
dines, cheese, canned lobster, cake, more 
caviare, radishes, cold meat, and to drink 
tea, weak tea, sweet tea, only tea. Like 
other Europeans, the Russians do not drink 
water. How often have I longed to turn on 
the faucet and get one real cold drink of 
water ! 

We eat heartily to the smattering fire of 
rifles and the occasional burst of a near-by 
shell. Soon music comes to wait on appetite ; 



92 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

a soldier with an accordion plays the lays of 
the Russian peasantry. From elsewhere in the 
ground appear two mustached soldiers, face 
each other, and begin to dance. 

The "lady" partner is bespangled with a 
cross of honor won in light housekeeping 
with a bayonet (on outpost duty). "She" 
shows a nice proportion of embarrassment 
and coquetry to her partner, who has this 
post of distinction because he is one of the 
few men of the company who have lived 
through the whole of the war to date. 

I realize now that I should have brought 
a recording talking machine as well as a 
cinema. The sounds of modern war are 
more impressive than the sights, even as they 
are in the hospitals. The film will show the 
dancing men, the dreamy musicians, the 
noble general and his officers, but memory 
must supply the music, the rifle fire, and the 
bursting shells. 

I linger over the meal. It is my great 
hour : to them only a break in the monotony 
of trench warfare. 



ON THE RAWKA BATTLE LINE 93 

Luncheon over, we advance again — our 
party reduced by the general's orders to 
himself, the colonel, Thompson, Toundoutoff, 
Captain Lyszczynski, and me ; ah, yes, there 
also is our good friend Colonel "Billy" in 
the lead. \ 

We pass through a labyrinth of communi- 
cation and supporting trenches filled with 
curious soldiers thronging to see the strangers, 
and so into the firing trench. 

This is a splendid affair, with a shrapnel- 
proof head cover and loopholes about two 
feet apart. By means of a step cut in the 
bank a second line of men can fire above the 
roof. The Germans are firing freely, but 
the Russians with admirable discipline are 
not returning a shot or "rubber-necking." 

Through the loopholes little can be seen, 
as it is not safe to look from one for more than 
a moment. A periscope is therefore pro- 
duced, and I am enabled to take a deliberate 
look over the battlefield. 

I see — nothing. Yes, I see an occasional 
puff as of vapor, where the snipers are work- 



94 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

ing, then by focussing a field glass into the 
periscope I detect about fifty yards away 
the wire entanglements of the German army, 
and behind that a line in the earth where lies 
the firing trench. 

Crack — bluck ! 

I have been too deliberate. A good glass 
has detected the periscope and a sharpshooter 
has hoped to find a weak spot where the offi- 
cer's head is revealed. "Fooled again," I 
think with unreasonable spite as I move on. 

Now Thompson has the machine up and 
is grinding away at a real battle scene. The 
Germans are firing fast, the crack of their 
rifles, the bluck of the bullets in the parapet, 
and the strange crack-whistle of those flying 
overhead being continuous. 

Shells are falling to our left. It is as 
noisy as a battle scene in a theatre and no 
danger of fire. No, nor panic here. 

Our general, however, has not been on the 
stage. He smiles quietly and says "boom" 
when a shell explodes near, and "ping" as a 
bullet whistles by. The soldiers are stolid 
and keep well away from the loopholes. 



ON THE RAWKA BATTLE LINE 95 

Thompson wants to climb out of the trench 
to take the smoke puffs across the way, but 
meets a smiling refusal. It would be cer- 
tain death. So he has to turn his camera and 
take the bullet-torn trees behind to show he is 
at the front. 

The "show" over, we review the rest of 
the regiments in the trenches standing beside 
their loopholes, as on parade. One young 
giant is so much on parade that a well-fed 
stomach half blocks the passage. The colonel 
pokes it playfully and the recruit straightens 
up with a delightful and embarrassed grin, 
very anxious to please the regiment's father. 
Where else is found this particular relation- 
ship between officer and man? 

Again we zigzag through the approaches, 
the drunken staggerings of the wine of death. 

The regimental volunteer meets us, a twelve- 
year-old typical kind. His face is wet with 
honest sweat, from carrying our presents, two 
empty shrapnel cases and fuses. He is freckled 
and sunburnt. He has a speech to make, 
but has forgotten it. And there is not an 



96 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

American boy alive who does not envy 
him. 

To horse, and the reserve battalion roars 
a hearty farewell. A hospitable battery fires 
a salute and as an echo resound the shells 
exploding in the German trenches. 

Ten miles of glorious sunset back to dinner 
and a real surprise — drinking water — not 
iced, but boiled and cooled. 

The regimental band plays through the 
meal, and the officers stand as "My Country, 
'tis of Thee" swells through the darkening 
forest. 

The guest from far-off Illinois tried to 
utter a word of thanks, but compromises 
with a vigorous use of his handkerchief. A 
strange fog is around the flickering candles. 
I would like to have companions like these 
in the event that — the event that — 

I look through the shattered window and 
as in confirmation of my thought see the sun 
set, flashing like a battle flag from across wire 
entanglements. 



CHAPTER VI 

Through Galicia 

We returned from Warsaw to the town 
which was occupied as Headquarters because 
we heard that the Emperor had come there, 
but when we arrived at the railroad crossing 
hamlet we found the "palace on wheels," 
as I had named it, gone. 

The Emperor had departed for Galicia by 
express. We followed by freight. Toun- 
doutoff had the excellent idea of travelling 
by automobile and even ordered one, only 
to learn that all the automobiles had been 
taken by the Imperial party. 

We traveled to Brody and then changed to 
the train on the Austrian railroad. 

When Russia adopted the wide gauge she 
showed great economic foresight, but handi- 
capped her military. It is a simple thing to 

H 97 



98 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

narrow gauges, but a military impossibility 
to widen bridges and tunnels. 

The trip was absorbing to me as we were 
travelling with Russian troops. Certain of 
my observations are better reserved for the 
chapter on the Russian Army, but the human 
side is best told as I saw it. 

The soldiers sat and stood around the doors 
of their cars and looked with mild interest 
on what they considered Russia Irradenta. 
When they sang they sang in low voices and 
mostly in minor key. There was no boister- 
ousness. 

There were no beggars for food along the 
way, but crowds of children came to the 
track, apparently in quest of sugar, because 
this is what the soldiers gave them. 

The great treat of the trip was the spec- 
tacle of two little Austrian children, hand 
in hand, singing as best they could the Aus- 
trian national hymn. Apparently they had 
found this a favorite with the Austrian soldiers 
when they were here and had never learned 
the difference between friends and enemies. 




Prepared Reserve Trench 




The Front Trench in the Carpathians, taken from 
between the Opposing Lines 



THROUGH GALICIA 99 

My camera caught a Cossack of the Cau- 
casus playing with them, and many other 
pictures of similar nature. 

When the first prisoners' trains were met 
there was a crowding around the cars. I 
hurried over to see how the prisoners were 
treated and found the soldiers giving them 
cigarettes. 

At one stop a prisoner heard me speaking 
to Thompson and hailed me in German- 
American. There was no doubt in his mind 
as to my nationality. 

"How are you getting on?" I asked, and 
he replied, "I ain't got no complaint to make." 
I would have liked to ask him a hundred 
questions, but his train pulled out and I had 
to step back to make room for the cigarette 
givers, who ran along beside the train to share 
their small store of comforts with the prisoners. 

We arrived at Lemberg about midnight. 
The station — a far better one than any in 
Chicago — was crowded with refugees sleep- 
ing on the floor, the window seats, — every- 
where. 



100 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Thompson very properly wanted to take 
a flashlight of the scene, but the station master 
objected that it would disturb the sleepers. 
I think he was right. 

An automobile the next morning took us 
to Peremysl. We happened to be following 
in the wake of the Emperor, and I had a fair 
idea of the way in which his person is guarded. 

All along the way — fifty miles or more — 
mounted policemen were stationed at each 
side of the road at intervals of about a quar- 
ter of a mile. Automobiles of the Imperial 
suite passed both ways, but these were more 
likely travelling on business than protection. 

We entered Peremysl by a road that did 
not run near any of the great forts but did 
pass between two of the ancient fortifications 
on the outskirts of the city. They were so 
small and so clearly outlined as to be value- 
less against heavy artillery fire, but with 
their moats strengthened by barbed wire and 
chevaux de frise, and with their ancient 
cannons replaced by machine guns, they were 
doughty obstacles to infantry attack. 



THROUGH GALICIA 101 

In the city I saw nothing to show that a 
siege had taken place. The streets were well 
filled with people going about as in time of 
peace. The stores were opened and there 
appeared to be as much activity as one would 
expect in a city of that size. 

It was only when we came to the river that 
we saw any signs of war. All the bridges 
had been broken down. The light Russian 
transport was easily crossing on pontoons. 
One of the broken spans had been utilized 
for a foot passage and work was going on 
apparently to make permanent repairs to 
another bridge. 

While taking moving pictures of the bridge, 
a policeman asked for our permit, — the 
only occasion upon which this was required 
while I was in Russia. 

Returning, I stopped to photograph a large 
park of position artillery. Most of it was 
mounted on wheels for transportation over 
the roads, and I saw a few heavy pieces on 
special carriages on the narrow-gauge railroad, 
which the investing army had built around 



102 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

the city the better to transport ammunition 
and supplies to the soldiers. The heavy guns 
had only arrived from Japan on the eve of 
surrender and had not even been put in posi- 
tion. 

On the way back to Lemberg our automo- 
bile broke down, — a fortunate accident, 
because we were able to stop and enter one 
of the Imperial machines that was preceding 
the Emperor to Lemberg. It was by far the 
most perfect automobile I have ever seen. 
Of course, the tires and springs of the machine 
were of the best make. In addition, the seats 
were separate armchairs specially designed 
to absorb the shock of rough roads. 

There was a collapsible top which when 
raised in place made a perfect limousine with 
glass windows on all sides, but which could 
be taken down in its entirety, leaving an open 
touring car. 

We arrived in Lemberg at night and found 
the sidewalks thronged with people waiting 
to see the Emperor return. He must have 
dined at the fortress, for it was some time 



THROUGH GALICIA 103 

after I was in bed that the cheering of the 
crowds told me of his arrival. 

The first person I met on the street the 
next day was General Danieloff, — one of 
the highest ranking generals in the Russian 
Army. The second man I met was General 
Yanouskevitch, Chief of Staff of all the Rus- 
sian armies. These important officers were 
entirely alone. The first was out to look at 
the city ; the second was shopping to buy a 
few presents for his family. 

I was surprised to find such high officers 
strolling around a captured town unguarded. 
They would have been easy victims for any 
persecuted civilian nursing revenge. I there- 
fore assumed that they knew there had been 
no persecution to call for revenge. 

I spent the day walking round the city, 
looking at the handsome architecture and 
talking with such shopkeepers as could under- 
stand French or English. 

The city was not booming, — at the same 
time, it was far from desolate. The greater 
part of the stores were open, but they were 



104 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

not doing much business, as the wealthier 
residents — Poles — were away. 

I told all the storekeepers that I was an 
American, and bringing the subject round to 
the war, asked about the conduct of the 
Russian soldiers. There was not one com- 
plaint of brutality or robbery or extortion. 
One man objected to the prohibition of the 
sale of alcohol, which is absolute. 

The General Governor Bobrinski obeys the 
rule he enforces. He has not tasted wine since 
the war began, although before that, he told 
me, he invariably drank it with his meals. 

The same night I attended a variety show 
of the Cafe Chantante variety, where liquid 
refreshments were served. The bulk of the 
patronage was composed of officers, — very 
young officers. It occurred to me that young 
men of that age in a captured city would 
undoubtedly get out of hand sometimes if 
liquor were available, and that the prohibition 
of the sale of liquor, to which the inhabitant 
had objected, was the only way to insure him 
from insult or assault. 






THROUGH GALICIA 105 

Most of the artistes were Poles, but one 
girl sang the "Grisly Bear" with an unmis- 
takable American accent. 

During the day permission had been ob- 
tained from the Grand Duke for me to visit 
the front in the Carpathians. 

War on the flats I had seen in France and 
Belgium and on the Rawka and Narew fronts 
in Poland. So much greater therefore was 
my pleasure in being allowed to look at the 
war in the mountains. 

By motor, therefore, we started early the 
next morning, and took the course that 
General Brousiloff's army followed after the 
battle of Gnila-Lipa. 

The Austrians had been fighting in retreat 
and had trenches dug for them by the popu- 
lation in the rear. On every crest facing to 
the east were trenches varying in complete- 
ness from kneeling trenches to finished field 
works. 

The successive steps of the Russian advance 
could be seen by the little mounds that had 
been dug with intrenching tools in irregular 



106 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

lines, spaced 50 to 100 yards apart. As our 
road wound around the ends of the Austrian 
front we found similar mounds where the 
Russians had attacked on the flank and facing 
them hastily improvised protections where 
the Austrians had thrown out flank guards. 

The fields were thickly dotted with graves 
that showed to us hurrying by no sign of 
distinction between friend and foe. 

What the relative mortality of the pursu- 
ing and the pursued is in warfare of this kind 
it will take impartial investigation after the 
war to determine, but I gathered the impres- 
sion that if the retreating troops are not dis- 
organized, and if they leave their successive 
shelters soon enough, they must inflict greater 
losses than they receive. 

If there had been any monotony in our 
journey it would have been relieved by the 
countless herds of cattle which had been 
collected and were being driven to supply the 
troops in the field. The war butcher cannot 
discriminate in his meat. We saw blooded 
bulls and cows in milk, and calves of all sizes. 






THROUGH GALICIA 107 

The transport trains showed the signs of 
an invading army. There were not only 
captured Austrian army wagons, larger and 
heavier than the Russian, and Galician 
farmers' wagons, but carts and carriages, 
some of them very good ones, loaded down 
with provisions and ammunition. There was 
a considerable sprinkling of Austrian horses 
among the Russian ponies, from large farm 
horses that were worn out with the distance 
that the ponies marched daily to blooded 
carriage horses. 

We came upon long trains of Austrian 
prisoners, most of them happy and well, but 
some footsore and ill. There was about one 
guard for every 100 prisoners, and the sick 
and sore-footed were allowed to sit down on 
the roadside at will to wait for returning 
wagons to carry them. Evidently there was 
no attempt on the part of the prisoners to 
escape. 

There is a standing joke among the Rus- 
sians of a non-commissioned officer coming 
into camp with his consignment of prisoners 



108 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

and being told that the men counted did not 
correspond with the number delivered him. 

"What?" he asked, "am I short?" In 
reply the officer said, "No, you have ten more 
men than you started with." 

I can account for the attitude of the 
prisoners only on two grounds, — many of 
them are of the Slav race and feel as much 
or more at home among the Russians as 
among the Austrians. Others are from the 
cities and would have no idea how to escape 
or how to live in the mountains if they did 
escape. Such a paucity of escorts could 
never have kept Siberians, or men from the 
Caucasus, or Kazaks, or cowboys. 

We stopped for lunch at Sambor, the head- 
quarters of the army. There I found a double 
interest in the strong personality of the Com- 
manding General and in a meeting of officers 
of the Order of St. George, called to award 
medals to such officers as had deserved them. 

The cross of St. George for officers is not 
awarded by a commanding general or even 
by the Czar himself. When a conspicuous 



THROUGH GALICIA 109 

act has taken place, or from time to time, the 
officers of this Order in each army are called 
together to propose to the Emperor for re- 
ward such officers as they think are particu- 
larly deserving. 

This has three effects. First, no officer 
can obtain the insignia by influence in high 
place, — with us it would be politics. Second, 
the officers conferring the reward will not give 
it to one less deserving than themselves. 
Third, the Order being the property of the 
members, is greatly cherished by them, and 
a member of the Order always feels the obli- 
gation of preserving its reputation. 

Shortly before our arrival, two companies 
of Cossacks of the Imperial Guard had per- 
formed an extraordinary piece of heroism in 
fighting six companies of the Prussian Im- 
perial Guard. The Czar in person had handed 
the Cross of St. George for soldiers to every 
surviving member, but the surviving officer 
had to wait until the Council of the Officers 
judged him worthy. It was just to pass on 
this particular case that the conference which 
I had the pleasure of seeing was called. 



110 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The act in question was the ambushing of 
six companies of Prussian Guards by two 
companies of Cossacks of the Russian Imperial 
Guard. 

The Muscovite commander had held his 
little force hidden until the enemy approached 
within fifty yards and then opened fire with 
machine guns and rifles. When the enemy, 
surprised and decimated, retreated into a 
ravine, he followed, and with hand grenades 
and bayonets destroyed or captured the whole 
force. 

During the meal I studied this man's face 
carefully to see the expression of such a crafty 
and dashing warrior. The features were not 
marked, the expression was studious, the 
manner mild. He hardly spoke through the 
meal, and, when introducing him the general 
mentioned his exploit, he was plainly em- 
barrassed. 

There are four Orders of the Cross of St. 
George for officers. 

The fourth Order, to which officers are first 
elected, is a small white enamelled cross hung 



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Two Austrian Children Singing Austrian Hymns to 
Russian Soldiers 



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Kazak Officer Playing with Austrian Children in 
Galicia 



THROUGH GALICIA 111 

on a yellow and black striped ribbon and worn 
over the heart. 

The third Order, somewhat larger, is hung 
from the second button of the tunic. 

The second Order, of which the Grand Duke 
Nicolas Nicolaiovitch is the only possessor 
at present, is worn at the throat. 

The first Order is only given to the com- 
manding general finishing a successful cam- 
paign. I am told it is a large six-pointed 
star sown on the tunic over the heart. 

When in Moscow I visited the Hall of the 
Order of St. George. The name of every 
member of the Order is engraved on the walls. 
I did not ask any questions about the nature 
of the Order, but I gathered that it is organ- 
ized along the lines of the Templars and of 
Masonic organizations. 

The railroad up from Sambor runs through 
many tunnels and over many bridges and the 
wagon road crosses the river frequently. 
Two of the railroad bridges are more than 
three hundred feet high and a half mile long. 
Just one span of one of these has been 



112 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

destroyed; not a single blast of dynamite 
was exploded in a railroad tunnel. I failed 
to notice from the plains to the mountain 
crests any point where the highroad had 
been damaged. 

We know now that these had been left 
intact to be used in the advance which has 
recently taken place. 

The villages along the way were mostly 
ruins, but this was due to retreating and 
advancing artillery fire and to hand bombs, 
but not to deliberate destruction by either 
army. 

My voyage up the mountain road occurred 
on Sunday, which was interesting, as the 
natives were in their Sunday clothing, re- 
sembling for all the world the chorus of a 
light opera. Their relations with the soldiers 
were extremely cordial. Girls chatted with 
the young soldiers at the roadside and re- 
spectable citizens smoked amicably with non- 
commissioned officers. 

As I had found it in France so I found it in 
Galicia. The citizens who had been in the 



THROUGH GALICIA 113 

immediate theatre of war were ruined, but 
those near by were getting rich selling supplies 
to the soldiers. 

Zigzagging up the mountain road we came 
upon a novelty of this war, a bath train. In 
permanent positions bath rooms can be fitted 
out in houses or bath huts can be built. In 
warm weather soldiers can bathe in rivers 
and in lakes, but for soldiers advancing and 
fighting in winter time, baths are not easy to 
provide. 

Whether from home instruction or military 
training the Russian soldiers are most cleanly, 
but men cannot keep clean in the firing 
trenches. Hence the bath train close behind 
the advance positions, to which the men were 
brought as often as practicable. 

There are lice in all the armies of this war, 
and lice are believed to be the carriers of 
typhus. The Austrian army is infected with 
typhus and the Russian armies in the Car- 
pathians were constantly taking Austrian 
trenches and Austrian prisoners; thus the 
danger of a typhus epidemic was ever present. 



114 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

To combat this the bath train was especially 
devised. Every soldier was given hot steam 
and then a shower bath and furnished with 
clean clothes. His own clothes were washed 
and disinfected and passed on to another sol- 
dier of equal size. When sickness appeared 
in any company, this company was given a 
special trip to the bath train. 

We spent the night at a corps headquarters 
and the next day advanced to a division on 
the firing line. 

In modern warfare, even the corps com- 
mander is located well in the rear ; the general 
of the division is the officer of highest rank to 
appear at the scene of fighting. I was for- 
tunate in arriving just as the general of this 
particular division was starting out to look 
over a battlefield recently won from the 
enemy, and to plan for the morrow. 

Mountain warfare is the only warfare 
these days where anything can be seen. 
Heights can be selected which if not out of 
range are at least out of the zone of artillery 
fire, and if an attack happens to be raging in 



THROUGH GALICIA 115 

the neighborhood, a good pair of field glasses 
will let the spectator in on the fight. I had a 
very pretty show. 

A mile away a Russian battery was planted 
in the open to cover some strategic ground. 
The Austrians were firing upon it with 
shrapnel, and other Russian batteries firing 
to protect it. The horizon was fairly dotted 
with puffs of darkened smoke, but my neigh- 
borhood was in the sleepy quiet of a spring 
noonday. 

Modern guns are protected with armored 
shields and modern gunners are quick to 
build shrapnel-proof homes ; so that while 
the Austrians have shelled this battery until 
more bullets than grass can be seen in its 
vicinity, its losses for a month have not 
much exceeded one man a day. 

Before us, on a mountain whose almost 
perpendicular top make it impregnable to 
bayonet assault, lay the most advanced Aus- 
trian position. But this very position, so 
secure against infantry, was a particularly 
good mark for artillery. The Russians had 



116 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

extended their positions to three sides of the 
hill. While we were there the incessant 
workers were building roads. Artillery would 
be brought at night and the enfiladed fortress 
turned into a shell trap. 

In the meantime all was peace in our 
vicinity. The enemy positions ran in zig- 
zagged shape, the nearest Austrian firing 
trench was not three hundred yards away. 
From there it ran to a sandy valley, a good half 
mile off. Trees and undergrowth had been 
removed except for an occasional lonely 
sentinel whose range measured to the defend- 
ing batteries would aid the gunners to fire 
against the Russian advance. The Austrian 
trenches were clearly visible through the 
glasses. They were of the covered type, 
built with loop-holes, and exceedingly strong 
against shrapnel and rifle fire. Another half 
mile beyond lay the supporting trenches, and 
around these, lounging in full view, were 
groups of Austrian soldiers clearly visible in 
their blue gray uniforms so badly adapted to 
modern warfare. 



THROUGH GALICIA 117 

Before the Austrian trenches were intricate 
wire entanglements, sturdily constructed on 
tree stumps and posts in the ground. In 
comparison to them the Russian entangle- 
ments appeared flimsy. There was no firing 
where we were, so I stepped out of the trench 
and walked to the wires. Just as I thought ! 
Not built to keep the enemy out, but to let 
our own men through, while appearing to the 
hostile officers that we were on the defensive. 

As everything remained quiet, I sent for 
Thompson and the moving picture machine 
and took pictures of the Russian trenches 
from the front. I hardly expected we would 
be suffered to remain there long, as the camera 
might be mistaken for a machine gun or a 
range finder or some new and mysterious 
engine of war, but not a single shot was fired 
in our direction. 

The lens of the cinema described a com- 
plete circle, recording, I believe, the first 
panorama of a battlefield taken from between 
the hostile lines. 

As we rode back to Headquarters a deer 



118 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

bounded from a thicket and took up the moun- 
tain side. He would have been a pleasing 
variety to camp fare and I expected every 
minute to see him fall before some sharp- 
shooter's bullet. But Russian discipline is 
rigid, and no man would fire without orders 
from a superior, which were not forthcoming. 
We made all the run from Turka to Lem- 
berg between dinner time and morning period, 
and twenty -four hours later we were back at 
the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief. 



CHAPTER VII 

Military History of the War till the 
End of April 

While at the Headquarters I was told the 
history of the war by a staff officer assigned 
to me for that purpose. The history as I 
reproduce it here begins with the declaration 
of war and runs to the time of my visit. 

When the Czar determined to reject the 
Kaiser's ultimatum and to accept war, his 
first action was to appoint the Grand Duke 
Nicolas Nicolaiovitch Commander-in-Chief, 
and General Yanouskevitch Chief of Staff, 
of all the Russian armies. The same night 
the corps of the Imperial Guard was en- 
trained for the fortress of Grodno, which is 
at once the key to the line of communications 
between Petrograd and Warsaw and the 
north corner of the secondary line of de- 
fences. 

119 



120 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

In peace the Russian army, active and re- 
serve, was divided into military districts, 
covering a country as big as North America 
and but thinly connected with railroads. 

The German-Austrian armies were similarly 
organized by districts, but owing to the 
denser populations as many army corps 
as the Russians could raise could be formed 
in a territory one-tenth the size of Russia 
and ten times as well supplied with railroads. 
It was, therefore, a simple matter for the 
Austrians and Germans to collect a large 
army long before the Russians could mobilize. 

The German-Austrian army, once mo- 
bilized, could choose between an offensive 
against France and an offensive against 
Russia. To avoid, therefore, being caught 
in the process of mobilization, as in the event 
France was caught, the main Russian army 
was mobilized well back from the frontier 
along the line Grodno-Brest-Litovsk-Rowno- 
Kiev. German and Austrian forces crossed 
the frontier near Thorn, Kilisch, and Krasnik, 
but no attention was paid to them. 



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Heavy lines indicate Russian movements. 

Shaded lines indicate German-Austrian movements. 
1 — 40,000 of the Imperial Guards entrain on the night of the declaration of war from 
Petrograd, for Grodno. 2 — Germans cross frontier at Thorn. 3 — Austrians cross 
frontier near Lublin. 4 — Russian army mobilizes along Brest-Litovsk-Rovno Railroad. 
5 — Russian army at Lublin advances to Krasnik. 6 — Samsonoff advances from line 
of River Narew into East Prussia. 7 — Renenkampf crosses frontier at Eydtkuhnen 
and wins battle of Gumbinnen, the first of the war. 8 — 250,000 German troops fall on 
Samsonoff at Tannenberg. 9 — The Austrians, leaving a covering force along the 
Gnila Lipa River, to hold the Russian advance from Tarnopol, strike with the bulk of 
their troops at Krasnik, and force the Russians to retreat to Lublin. 10 — Samsonoff 
defeated — August 28th. 11 — Pleve, with all mobilized reinforcements, advances 
to Chelm. 12 — Brusiloff and Rouski are sent to drive back Austrians on Gnila Lipa 
positions. 13 — Dimitrieff hurls back Austrians near Lemberg. 14 — Lemberg 
occupied by Russians — September 3d. 15 — Rouski advances from Lemberg to 
Rawa Ruska, the rear of the main Austrian advance. 16 — Brusiloff moves on Grodek, 
west of Lemberg. 17 — Austrians rush reinforcements to defeat Brusiloff. 18 — Aus- 
trians before Chelm turn to face Rouski at Rawa Ruska. 19 — Pleve falls on Auffen- 
berg in the rear. 20 — Brusiloff attacks at Grodek. 21 — Austrian army at Grodek 
retreats to Carpathians ; that at Lublin retires to Cracow. 22 — Auffenberg, caught 
between Pleve and Brusiloff, falls. 23 — Przemysl invested by Russians. 24 — Ren- 
enkampf, meanwhile, advances through East Prussia to beyond Konigsberg. 
25 — Hindenburg turns victorious army of Tannenberg against Renenkampf, in an 
effort to pin him against the Baltic Sea. 26 — Renenkampf, however, retreats safely 
to Suwalki. 



MILITARY HISTORY 121 

The German invasion of Belgium revealed 
the plan of campaign of the Kaiser's General 
Staff, and the power and speed of its advance 
towards Paris becoming very evident every- 
day, the Grand Duke did not wait for the 
mobilization of his army, but to make a diver- 
sion in favor of his allies, pushed two armies, 
themselves not fully organized, into East 
Prussia. 

General Samsonoff with nearly four army 
corps crossed the frontier to the east of 
Mlawa. General Renenkampf, with three 
army corps and one division, crossed the fron- 
tier at Eydkuhnen, on the main line between 
Kovno and Koenigsberg, and won the first 
battle of the war at Gumbinnen. 

The purpose of the invasion was to compel 
the Germans to detach troops from the forces 
invading France. The plan of campaign was 
for the two armies to join each other at Hils- 
burg for mutual support. 

At the same time the Grand Duke advanced 
an army from Lemberg to stop the Austrian 
invasion and despatched two armies based at 



122 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Rowno and Kiev, entering Galicia from the 
east. 

Having forced all the barrier fortresses of 
Belgium, having defeated the French in Al- 
sace at Charleroi and the English at Mons, 
with apparently an open road to Paris and 
another Sedan before them, the Germans 
withdrew six army corps of the active army 
from the west front and sent them to join 
Hindenburg in East Prussia, where they 
joined the troops that had been mobilized 
in that territory. 

General Samsonoff had succeeded in his 
object in causing a diversion from the west- 
ern front, but in doing so he had advanced 
ahead of Renenkampf. His four corps were 
attacked by Hindenburg between Allenstein 
and Tannenberg with double his forces and 
were overwhelmed on the 28th August. 

At this stage of the war the Austrians as 
well as the Germans were attempting to use 
Napoleonic tactics. Placing a force along 
the Gnila-Lipa to hold back the main Russian 
advance, the main part of the Austrian army 



MILITARY HISTORY 

attacked the Russians at Krasnik and threw 
them back upon Lublin on the 26th day of 
August. 

Germany was very close to winning the 
war at that time. It took the decisive action 
of a great general to save the situation. 
Abandoning Samsonoff to his fate, the Grand 
Duke forwarded his newly arriving corps 
under General Pleve to Cholm, and with- 
drew the Guards Corps, which, by this time, 
had been moved to Warsaw through Ivan- 
gorod to Lublin. At the same time he 
ordered the armies of General Rouski and 
Brousiloff to defeat the Austrian forces on 
the Gnila-Lipa River at all costs. These 
generals obeyed the order literally, putting 
into the fight all their reserves, even to the 
transport drivers. 

The numbers engaged were not unequal. 
Eleven times the corps under the Bulgarian 
General Radko Dimitrieff took the moun- 
tain which was the key to the Austrian posi- 
tion and eleven times the Hungarian infantry 
took it back. The twelfth time Dimitrieff 



124 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

advanced, and all the other corps moving in 
echelon put the Austrian army into complete 
rout. Lemberg was evacuated and occupied 
by the Russians on the 3d September, four 
days before the battle of the Marne. 

General Rouski passed through Lemberg 
without stopping, aiming for the rear of the 
Austrian army, which was fighting along the 
line Lublin-Cholm. General Brousiloff ad- 
vanced to the strong position of Gorodok, 
upon which the defeated Austrians had 
stopped and where they were being reenforced 
as rapidly as possible. 

The Austrian army of General Auffenberg 
now attempted to leave a screen before that 
of the Russian General Pleve and advanced 
against Rouski at Rawa Ruska. But Pleve 
was not to be deceived. Advancing rapidly, 
he pinned Auffenberg' s army between his 
army and that of General Rouski and 
captured it. 

The Austrians before Lublin at this time 
were joined by the German army corps 
which had crossed the frontier at Kalisch at 



MILITARY HISTORY 125 

the outbreak of war and had been manoeu- 
vring through Poland in an unsuccessful at- 
tempt to confuse the Russian commander- 
in-chief. They arrived in time to partici- 
pate in the general defeat and to assist in 
the retreat to Cracow. 

The army before Gorodok retired over the 
Carpathians, leaving a garrison in Peremysl. 

Even after Samsonoff's defeat Renenkampf 
continued to advance, either from a misun- 
derstanding of the situation, or deliberately, 
to prevent Hindenburg from striking for 
Warsaw. Upon him Hindenburg turned the 
victorious army of Allenstein, and passing 
four army corps through the Massourian 
Lakes, attempted to force Renenkampf 
against the Baltic Sea. 

Renenkampf was quick in retreat, as in 
advance, and the German soldiers were ex- 
hausted after their forced marches through 
Belgium and their fighting at Allenstein. 
Renenkampf was able to establish a flank 
guard near Korschen and to retreat to the 
fortress of Suwalki, losing a portion of the 



126 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

artillery of the territorial division. Thus 
came to an end the first phase of the war. 

Of these manoeuvres and battles the west- 
ern public has heard little beyond the actual 
fight of Tannenberg. To be sure, judged 
by the standard of other wars, it is one of the 
most complete victories in history, but as a 
fragment of the strategy of this great cam- 
paign it assumes a different aspect. 

How much must General Von Kluck be- 
fore Paris have yearned for the six corps 
d'armee with which Hindenburg won his 
marshal's baton before Allenstein, as he saw 
the French reserves debouch from Paris and 
take in flank the army with which he had 
planned to force the French back upon the 
mountain barrier of Switzerland ! 

How much the Austrian generals, as they 
lost the three great battles of Gnila-Lipa, 
Rawa Ruska, and Lublin, must have wished 
for the help of these same army corps as 
these were driving Renenkampf through East 
Prussia ! 

How valuable to General Joffre, in decid- 



MILITARY HISTORY 127 

ing to stop his army on the Marne, to learn 
that six army corps of his opponents had 
been withdrawn from before him and that 
the Austrian army had been entirely over- 
thrown and all Germany's reserves for some 
time to come would be needed on her eastern 
front ! 

It was the Grand Duke's movements in 
East Prussia and Galicia that decided the 
campaign in France. 

The end of the Galician campaign found 
the victorious armies of Gnila-Lipa, Rawa 
Ruska, and Lublin very closely concentrated 
in the triangle Peremysl-Tarnoff-Sandemir, 
to which they had come in pursuit of their 
various enemies. A reorganization was im- 
mediately necessary. The Corps de la Garde 
was directed upon Ivongorod. The infantry 
corps advanced into the Carpathians in a 
general continuous line from the Dukla Pass 
to Cracow. 

Hindenburg now left four army corps be- 
fore Suwalki to face Renenkampf and came 
back with the rest of his army by use of the 



128 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

great German system of military railroads to 
Kalisch, striking for the Russian right flank 
and rear. Immediately the exposed corps 
were withdrawn under cover of the Vistula 
River to Ivangorod, while the Austrians de- 
bouching from Cracow advanced along the 
other bank. The siege of Peremysl was raised. 

Hindenburg had six army corps. Three 
of these he directed to Ivangorod and three 
upon Warsaw. 

Ivangorod, garrisoned by the Corps de la 
Garde, the elite of the Russian army, was 
easily held, but Warsaw was only saved by 
a narrow margin. Its defending force was 
heavily outnumbered and in dire straits 
when the Siberian corps arrived for the first 
time upon the theatre of war. The defend- 
ers were still in the minority, and were fall- 
ing back when the regiments of the Corps 
de la Garde, relieved at Ivangorod, began to 
come in by the Ivangorod-Warsaw railroad. 
There was no time to form the corps as a 
corps, but as each regiment detrained it was 
marched into the battle. 




Heavy lines indicate Russian movements. 

Shaded lines indicate German- Austrian movements. 
1 — Russian field army advances to line between Dukla Pass and Tarnow. 
2 — Hindenburg, leaving 4 corps before Renenkampf at Suwalki, moves with 6 corps 
through Silesia. 3 — Russians remove 3 armies nearest Tarnow and rush them to 
Lublin-Warsaw line. 4 — Hindenburg forces 3 corps upon Warsaw, and 3 upon Ivan- 
gorod. 5 — Siberian troops arrive and save Warsaw. 6 — Hindenburg defeated 
and repulsed before Warsaw. 7 — ■ Hindenburg retreats to Rawka River, drawing 
Russians after him. 8 — Then taking force before Ivangorod, he hurls them at pur- 
suing Russian flank. 9 — Austrians arrive too late to occupy trenches left by Germans. 
10 — Hindenburg again defeated. 11 — Hindenburg retires to line between Cracow 
and Kalisz, and Austrians retreat over Carpathians. 12 — Przemysl, relieved in the 
advance, re-invested by Russians. 13 — Russians debouch from Lodz upon Cracow 
and Silesia. 14 — Sievers moves from Augustowo into East Prussia. 15 — Hinden- 
burg, leaving Austrians to attack front, dashes from Thorn upon Russian flank. Rus- 
sians repulsed. 16 — Renenkampf driven into Warsaw, and army at Lodz out- 
flanked on both flanks. 17 — Pleve rushes reinforcements. 18 — Renenkampf, 
from Warsaw, falls on German left flank. 19 — Troops rushed from France by Hinden- 
burg arrive too late to affect Russian victory at Lodz, but attack near Lowicz. 
20 — Rouski, commanding this front, considers his line strategically weak, so with- 
draws to positions along Bzura, Rawka, and Nida rivers. 21 — Austrians attack 
Russians in Galicia, but are repulsed. 22 — Sievers invades East Prussia to a line 
between the Mazurian Lakes and the Kuriches Haff . 



MILITARY HISTORY 129 

A member of the guards corps, pride shin- 
ing in his eyes, told me how two regiments 
of the guard, totalling eight thousand men, 
arrived as the Siberian corps were reeling 
back before the German onslaught, and with 
flags flying and band playing marched into 
the thickest of the attack. After the battle 
only hundreds remained where thousands 
had been, but the tide was turned. Russian 
reinforcements continued to arrive until seven 
corps opposed the three of Hindenburg. 

Once stopped, the Germans could not long 
hold their position, as the Russian reinforce- 
ments continued to arrive until at Warsaw 
the Russians had seven army corps — or what 
was left of them — to oppose the remnants 
of the three corps of Hindenburg. Hin- 
denburg, however, would not give up without 
a last desperate struggle. Withdrawing his 
three army corps from before Warsaw to 
the Rawka River in order to draw the Rus- 
sians after him, he took the other three army 
corps from before Ivangorod to throw upon 
the advancing Russians' flank. It was his 



130 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

intention that the advancing Austrians should 
fill the German trenches before Ivangorod 
and keep the Russian army there in check. 

Either the Austrians arrived too late, or 
the Germans left too soon. The Russians, 
wide awake, came pouring through the gap 
at Ivangorod, as before they had done at 
Cholm, and met the advancing Austrians to 
the surprise of both parties. The Russians 
thought they were pursuing the retreating 
Germans ; the Austrians thought they were 
advancing into a position held by their ally. 

The fight was confused and largely hand 
to hand, which was to the advantage of the 
heavier Russians. The Austrians were com- 
pelled to retreat again to Cracow. 

Hindenburg's manoeuvre proving unsuc- 
cessful, his flanking force being stopped, and 
his own left wing driven in, he retreated 
precipitately to Silesia. Peremysl was rein- 
vested. 

In the meantime on the western front the 
Germans had retreated to the river Aisne 
and there had stopped. The British Expe- 



MILITARY HISTORY 131 

ditionary Force had been withdrawn from 
its position in the line, and together with 
reinforcements from England, was advanc- 
ing through the Pas de Calais with the in- 
tention of rolling up the German right or at 
least of connecting with the Belgian army in 
Antwerp. 

Just at this time, when the German situa- 
tion seemed as bad as it had appeared good 
at the end of August, the tremendous German 
"second wind" began to make itself felt. 

From the defensive at Lille Germany 
rapidly passed to the offensive. A direct 
attack on Antwerp captured the place with 
scarcely more trouble than the earlier at- 
tacks on Liege and Namur. The Belgian 
army retreated to Ostend, and the Germans, 
coming with increasing forces, threatened to 
break the Allied line, to occupy the Channel 
ports, to cut off England from France; in- 
deed, to win a decisive battle there and then. 

The situation became desperate ; every 
equipped man in France was in the firing 
line. The British Expeditionary Force had 



132 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

used up its reserves. Kitchener's army was 
only in the form of preliminary enlistment. 

Another Russian diversion against Prussia 
became necessary. 

Generals Brousiloff and Dimitrieff, who 
had succeeded in command of Rouski's army, 
with about eight army corps held the moun- 
tain passes of the Carpathians. General 
Sullivanoff with two army corps blockaded 
Peremysl. General Baron Sievers with eight 
army corps was ordered into East Prussia 
from the neighborhood of Suwalki, and 
General Rouski, commanding the rest of the 
Russian arm, advanced along the line from 
Cracow to Kalisch, placing General Renen- 
kampf with an army of three corps on his 
right as a flank guard. 

Leaving the Austrians to engage with the 
front of the Russian advance, Field Marshal 
Hindenburg concentrated his troops near 
Thorn and struck for the Russian right flank, 
which extended as far north as Warta. This 
flank was immediately drawn back, and one 
flank had reached Lodz and faced north by 



MILITARY HISTORY 133 

the time Renenkampf's flank guard was 
driven into Warsaw. Hindenburg managed 
to arrive in sufficient numbers to attack this 
army on three sides, and had nearly sur- 
rounded it when General Pleve's army came 
to its assistance, taking post on both flanks. 
The fight was still in favor of the Germans 
when Renenkampf, with his reorganized force 
and with reinforcements from Sievers, struck 
out from Warsaw and cut General Mackensen 
from the rest of the German army. 

The tables were turned, and on 22d October 
Field Marshal Hindenburg telegraphed to in- 
stantly stop the attack on the river Yser and 
to forward all available reinforcements to him. 

These troops in leaving Belgium prevented 
a victory upon that front and arrived in 
Poland too late to be of effect there. General 
Mackensen had cut his way back to the Ger- 
man army, leaving 10,000 prisoners, but the 
momentum of the German attack was stopped 
and it was upon a reformed and intrenched 
line that the army from Prance attacked in 
the vicinity of Lowitsch. 



134 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The diversion successfully accomplished, 
the Russian army occupied positions along 
the Bzoura, Rawka, and Neida rivers, Tarnow 
and the Carpathian passes. 

During the battles around Lodz, the Aus- 
trians had attacked in the Carpathians. 
They were driven back, leaving 50,000 pris- 
oners. 

Stopping his advance to send four army 
corps of reinforcements to Lodz, General 
Baron Sievers fortified himself in a position 
between the Baltic Sea and the Massourian 
Lakes. 

The second phase of the war then ended with 
the conquest of Belgium completed by Ger- 
many, with the English and French attempt 
to flank the German army thrown back, and 
the German counter-offensive stopped by the 
Russian attack on Silesia, and a bloody but 
indecisive combat around Lodz. 

The third phase is concerned with the first 
German offensive against Russia. This came 
at the time of the height of the diplomatic 
attempt to bring the Balkan States into 



MILITARY HISTORY 135 

alliance with the Triple Entente, and shortly 
before the attack on the Dardanelles began. 

The first effort was to take Warsaw by 
direct assault. Six hundred pieces of artil- 
lery of all calibres were massed upon a line 
six miles long between Souchaczew to Boli- 
mow. Here for the first time the Germans 
used asphyxiating gases. For ten days and 
ten nights the bombardment continued and 
for ten days and ten nights the Germans 
advanced in close order and in columns, — 
as is their habit when they are determined 
to take a position at all costs. 

The Russians were thoroughly intrenched, 
fully equipped with artillery, ammunition, 
and machine guns, and held doggedly to their 
trenches, although they suffered over 30,000 
casualties. When satisfied that no sacrifice 
of men could take this position General Hin- 
denburg ceased the attack, and putting eight 
army corps on the strategic railways, came sud- 
denly upon General Baron Sievers, who, with 
three and a half corps, was intrenched between 
the Massourian Lakes and the Baltic Sea. 



136 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The army of General Baron Sievers was 
badly defeated and retreated in various di- 
rections, the principal part taking refuge in 
the fortress of Olita. The Germans then 
tried to carry Grodno by assault, and also the 
fortress of Ossowetz, the forts that covered 
the passes into Russian Poland, as Liege and 
Namur covered those into Belgium. Unlike 
the latter, the Russian forts withstood the heav- 
iest bombardment and most ferocious assaults. 

As a counter-attack the Russians ad- 
vanced from Prasnysz upon Mlawa, and as 
a consequence the Germans withdrew one 
army from before Grodno and rallied at 
Mlawa, and resorted to their favorite man- 
oeuvres, swinging around the Russian right 
flank, which was at Prasnysz. This move 
was anticipated, and the Russians advancing 
from Pultusk took the flankers in reverse. 
This battle is called by the Russians the vic- 
tory of Prasnysz, and was fought during the 
week of February 22d-28th, and marked the 
end of the German offensive. 

During this time the Russians continued 



<50UDFUSE NO TAKUM 







Heavy lines indicate Russian movements. 

Shaded lines indicate German-Austrian movements. 

1 — Sievers' line. 

2 — Hindenburg attacks Warsaw with artillery from line from Sochachew to Bolimow, 

but is repulsed. 

3 — Thereupon Hindenburg moves against Sievers, turns the Russian flank, and over- 

whelms him. 

4 — Hindenburg attacks Grodno, but is repulsed. 

5 — Russians in counter-attack along Ossowetz-Pultusk line. 

6 — Germans recover themselves at Mlawa, and try to turn Russian flank. 

7 — Russians debouching from Pultusk outflank the German flankers at Przasnysz, 

February 22-28. 



MILITARY HISTORY 137 

to advance into the Carpathians. There 
was no great battle, but a number of corre- 
lated engagements, in which the Russians 
were almost invariably successful, taking 
over 100,000 prisoners. The great event in 
this theatre of the war was the surrender of 
Peremysl on March 17th with 120,000 men. 

Before the surrender the Austrians com- 
pletely destroyed the forts, and blew up the 
bridges and railroad yards, so as to make the 
place valueless to the captors. All cannons 
and small arms were destroyed as far as 
possible. 

During the week of April 24th the Emperor 
of Russia visited Lemberg, Peremysl, and 
the Headquarters of the Galician armies, 
and announced "The delivery of Red Russia 
from the German oppressor." This point 
marks the highest tide of the Russian advance 
into Austria. 

The campaign of last year was made by 
the armies which had been organized in time 
of peace. The campaign of this year is being 



138 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

made by what is left of those armies, and by 
the forces which the different nations have 
been able to put in the field to assist them. 

It goes without saying that Russia has an 
abundance of trained men. Her army is 
limited, however, by a lack of arms. Abun- 
dantly prepared as she was, she suffered in 
comparison with her chief enemy through her 
losses in the Japanese war and through the 
quantities of arms furnished by her to the 
Balkan States in the year 1913. 

Russia had enormous government arsenals, 
but no private arms plants, and very few 
factories which could be converted into mak- 
ing war supplies. Now the wastage of rifles 
in war is about as great as that of men. 
When a man is captured, his rifle generally 
goes with him. A wounded man almost in- 
variably drops his gun, and then many guns are 
being broken every day. Thus it is, according 
to the best information I have been able 
to obtain, that Russia had in the field on the 
1st of May only about one hundred and fifty 
divisions of fifteen thousand men each. Of 



MILITARY HISTORY 139 

these, fifteen divisions were in the Caucasus 
Mountains, leaving one hundred and thirty- 
five divisions on the German and Austrian 
fronts. The advantage that lay with Russia 
was that these were all first-line troops. 

Germany and Austria had not only gov- 
ernment arsenals, but great corporations 
whose business was making war material to 
sell to other countries. They had also a great 
number of factories which could be adapted to 
this work. As a result there have been ample 
arms for all the men that could be put into the 
field. The information in Stockholm was to 
the effect that Germany had two hundred 
divisions of fifteen thousand men, and that 
Austria, even after her tremendous losses, had 
been able to put seventy-five divisions in the 
field. Among these were many troops who 
had passed the flower of young manhood, 
but who could do good service in the trenches. 
Furthermore, because of the splendid system 
of strategic railways, Germany and Austria 
have not had to put such demand upon their 
troops as Russia. 



140 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

In 1914, Germany attempted to use her 
strategic railways to make quick movements 
from one front to the other, but the move- 
ments were not executed with genius and 
resulted less well than a simpler plan might 
have done. Therefore, in 1915, she gave 
up attempting to duplicate Napoleon, and 
following the example Grant decided to 
batter away at one enemy until issue was 
reached. Germany left the defence of the 
Italian frontier to fifteen or twenty Austrian 
divisions of landwehr, left sixty divisions of 
mixed German troops on the French-English 
front, and with the rest marched against 
Russia. Forty divisions were concentrated 
in the neighborhood of Cracow and thrown 
at the Russian salient in Galicia, held by about 
ten divisions. 

Early in the war, the Russian Commander- 
in-Chief had realized the disadvantage under 
which he suffered from lack of railways, and 
had established a system of strategic reserves. 
Under this system, he kept rather a thin line 
at the front and heavy forces massed at road 



MILITARY HISTORY 141 

and railway junctions in the rear, ready to 
reenforce the troops attacked, which were 
under orders to fall back upon the reserves. 

In the first clash near Tarnow, the Ger- 
man attack was better manoeuvred than the 
Russian defence, and the army of General 
Radko Dimitrieff was badly cut up. There 
were some days of anxiety, as I well know, 
having been at that time a guest at the 
Russian Headquarters. The Russians de- 
stroyed the railways as they retired and 
found safety in their greater mobility. The 
Russian infantry can outwalk anything in 
Europe. 

When the campaign developed, the Rus- 
sians made no attempt to stand in Galicia. 
They fought only such actions as facilitated 
the removal of stores and equipment and in- 
flicted the greater loss upon the enemy, 
while suffering the less loss themselves. 

True to their theory of tactics, they 
abandoned Peremysl without a siege. In 
this way they retired to the end of the Aus- 
trian railway line and did not offer battle 



142 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

until they were in front of the Russian rail- 
road connecting Lublin with Cholm. 

The English and French allies attempted 
in May to come to the assistance of the 
Russians. The French made the heaviest 
attack which they have made in this war in 
the neighborhood of Arras, and the English 
advanced in the neighborhood of Ypres. 
The French made considerable gains in spite 
of the fact that their light artillery was not 
well adapted to the taking of such heavy 
defences as the Germans had constructed, 
the English rather less ; not because of lack 
of willingness, but because they had been un- 
able to equip or train their new army suffi- 
ciently to take the offensive. Thus the Ger- 
mans were enabled to continue their offensive 
against the Russians without reenf orcing their 
west front. 

In accepting battle on the Lublin-Cholm 
line, the Russians were compelled to draw 
troops from other points and abandon all 
their trenches before the permanent lines of 
defence, allowing the Germans to come against 



MILITARY HISTORY 143 

Novo Georgievsk and the prepared trenches 
of Warsaw. 

The position now is like that of two 
wrestlers, of whom one is on the mat, the 
other trying for a fall. The Germans in the 
ratio of about 20 to 13 are striking here and 
there, trying to find a weak spot in the 
Russian line. The Russians, on the de- 
fensive, are reenforcing the weak spots and 
watching for opportunity to make a vigorous 
offensive if the German generals blunder. 
There is distinct chance that the Germans will 
break the Russian line at some point, com- 
pelling a general retirement with loss. There 
is a chance, also, that one of the German 
columns of attack may be cut off and an- 
nihilated. 

The German advance between the fortresses 
of Ossowetz and Novo Georgievsk is a bold 
but dangerous stroke. If the attackers can 
remain in greater strength, they may cut off 
Novo Georgievsk and Warsaw with the troops 
therein and compel a capitulation. On the 
other hand, they are advancing with both 



144 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

flanks exposed. If the Russians can come in 
greater strength, they may be able to cut 
off this advance as they did that of General 
Mackensen in October. 

In the absence of such a manoeuvre as will 
cause heavy loss to one side or the other, the 
battle will develop into a general butchery. 
Austro-German superiority in numbers is 
such that it can expect to push the Russian 
line back, and back, and back, but only 
under the penalty of suffering much heavier 
loss than the Russians. Ground gained in 
this way cannot seem to be worth the cost. 
Russia can fill her loss much better than 
Germany. In time, she can expect to arm 
and equip a larger force than she now has in 
the field. It does not look as though Ger- 
many will be able to raise a larger force than 
she is now fighting with. Sooner or later, 
and to be sure later rather than sooner, the 
English new army will be organized and 
armed so that it can take the field; so it 
would appear that even though Germany 
occupies Poland and fortifies herself along the 



MILITARY HISTORY 145 

north and west banks of the Bug and Narew 
rivers, as she has done through France and 
Belgium, another year will see the Allies in 
superiority and on the offensive all along 
their front. 

The recent despatches from France and 
Italy even indicate that their advance in 
Alsace and along the Isonzo may compel 
Germany and Austria to detach troops in the 
near future. 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Russian Army 

I have found such unwillingness to accept 
the estimate I have placed upon the Russian 
army that I think it well to preface a discus- 
sion of its qualities by a generalization of 
history. 

Russia at the beginning was a nation with- 
out any natural protective boundary. Far 
from having oceans or English Channels to 
protect her, she had not even a mountain 
range or a great river. In the years during 
which there have been white men settled in 
America, Russia has warred with all the 
greatest and most warlike peoples of the 
earth, and warred with each of them in the 
height of its power. 

She has fought the Mongols and the Turks, 
the Prussians under Frederick the Great, the 

146 



THE RUSSIAN ARMY 147 

Napoleonic Empire under the greatest general 
the world has ever seen, the three allied na- 
tions of England, France and Piedmont, the 
Turks again, and, lastly, the Japanese. 

As a net result of all these wars Russia 
holds more territory in Europe and Asia 
than all the others combined. Why, then, 
this unwillingness to concede to Russia an 
army equal to — if not superior to — any 
other? The facts speak for themselves. 
However, in military affairs facts invariably 
yield to preconceived opinions, and, above 
all, to national vanity. 

The Russian army was first made into a 
regular force by Ivan IV. It was thoroughly 
reorganized by Peter the Great; it was 
destroyed in destroying the Napoleonic 
Grande Armee and again rebuilt. In 1873 
it was remodelled by taking all that was ap- 
plicable to Russia of the Prussian military 
system. 

Critics who did not have political reasons 
for underestimating its qualities agreed upon 
its splendid efficiency against overwhelming 



148 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

obstacles in the Japanese War. It has much 
improved since then. In one respect, and 
in one respect only, has Russia lagged behind 
her western neighbor, and that is in rail- 
roads. The Russian military authorities real- 
ized the serious military handicap thus en- 
tailed, but they were unable to obtain a 
remedy. Russia planned no offensive in 
Europe, if for no other reason than the ab- 
surdity of driving against the stone wall of 
German resistance, when an infinite terri- 
tory incapable of self-defence was open to 
the eastward, if it should ever be wanted. 

Russian authorities as long ago as 1900 
(see General Kuropatkin's report through 
the Minister of War, 1900) realized the 
possibility of an Austro-German offensive. 
After the annexation of Bosnia and Herze- 
govina this possibility grew larger and larger. 
The military authorities did not underesti- 
mate the power of this offensive, nor did 
they forget the strategy whereby a similar 
offensive was destroyed a hundred years ago. 
Therefore, the multiplicity of factors — 



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Typical Russian Infantry 



THE RUSSIAN ARMY 149 

(1) Inability through lack of railroads to 
make an offensive into Germany; 

(2) Lack of any incentive to make an offen- 
sive into Germany ; 

(3) A traditional policy of defence by fight- 
ing a western European army in the 
surroundings of Eastern Europe; and 

(4) — not touched on before — an absence of 
factories to make automobiles, the kind 
of equipment best adapted to fighting 
in Western Europe, pointed to a form of 
equipment for the Russian army entirely 
different from that chosen by the German 
General Staff. 

Beginning with the transport, we find an 
almost total lack of the great automobile 
trucks used by the Germans, French, and 
British. These trucks, which can carry from 
one to five tons each, and can run up to 20 
miles an hour, can average 100 miles a day, 
and on special occasion can cover 200 to 250 
miles in a day, are infinitely superior to any 
kind of horse-drawn wagon on the perfect 
turnpikes of Germany, France, Belgium, and 



150 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Austria. They would be as unserviceable in 
Russia as on the unpaved roads of the 
Mississippi bottom lands. 

Russia has developed a system of trans- 
port easy for her to produce which can travel 
on any kind of roads and can be supplied 
indefinitely. She has for the front line work 
small two and four wheel wagons. The two- 
wheel wagons drawn by one pony, like a 
mustang pony, have covered watertight boxes 
about 4 ft. square. The four-wheeled wagons, 
on four large wheels, have boxes about 7 ft. 
X 3 ft., and are drawn by two ponies. How 
many of these wagons there are in the Rus- 
sian army I cannot say, — certainly over 
one hundred thousand. 

These wagons are of specially wide tread 
and are almost uncapsizable. In case of 
catastrophe they are easily destroyed by fire. 
Incidentally, they are so individualistically 
Russian that no enemy can make adequate 
use of them. These army wagons are not 
nearly sufficient for the needs of the enormous 
number of troops engaged in this war. In 



THE RUSSIAN ARMY 151 

addition many thousands of peasants' wagons 
have been commandeered. 

The Russian peasants' wagons are of a 
unique type. The horses' collars are fast- 
ened to the front end of the shafts. From 
the same point a rope is stretched to the 
outside of the hub of the front wheel, so the 
danger of breaking the axle is minimized. 
There is generally a brace from the body of 
the wagon to the outside of the rear wheel, 
which frequently runs upon a wooden axle. 
All of these vehicles are drawn by small 
hardy Russian horses, but these, unlike the 
well-trained cavalry mounts, are hardly 
broken. 

The great advantage of this system of 
transport is that it can go over any kind of 
road or no road. The two- wheel carts are 
almost as mobile as pack horses. The loss of 
any unit is also comparatively insignificant. 

The distances covered by these apparently 
primitive transports are enormous. Columns 
several miles long are made up and marched 
day and night. The horses are exceedingly 



152 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

tough, and when worn out can be renewed 
indefinitely. The drivers are endowed with 
Asiatic placidity; sleeping contentedly on the 
moving wagons, they demand no time off. 
They never fret or irritate their horses. 
I do not remember seeing a single whip in 
the hundred or more miles of transport 
wagons I must have seen. On good roads, 
of course, they cannot cover anything like 
as much ground as motor trucks, but they 
can go where motor trucks cannot move. 
They can go very much faster than any 
other horse transport the world has ever 
seen, excepting that of their Mongolian 
prototypes. When the roads begin to be 
bad they soon catch up with their machine- 
driven competitor. Apparently it takes an 
enormous number of men to work this kind 
of transport, but relatively to other methods 
the number may not be so high. There are 
no repair shops, no extra mechanics or carry- 
ing of complicated spare parts. Each man 
repairs his own wagon and shoes his horse, 
and when either becomes substantially worn 




Russian Field Hospital 



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Field Chapel 



THE RUSSIAN ARMY 153 

out, the horse goes to pasture, the wagon 
to the camp fire. 

On the outbreak of war the Russians had 
only horse-drawn artillery. It would be 
absurd to say that where the big nine or 
eleven inch guns can be brought and man- 
oeuvred field-pieces are their equals. But 
great guns cannot be brought into Russia 
although they can be brought into France. 
There appears to be no dispute that the French 
and Russian field artillery are superior to all 
others. France has had to fight in her own 
country against the big gun she does not 
possess, and Russia will never have to do 
this. 

The Russian field artillery is extraordinarily 
good. I speak with knowledge because I 
have frequently seen it in action. At the 
outbreak of war it was said to be composed 
of six thousand pieces, divided into batteries 
of eight guns. These guns were in general 
3" field pieces modelled after the famous 
French 75's, 4J" and 6" field howitzers, and 
the great Russian 6" field artillery gun. 



154 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

This is much the best field-piece in the world 
and has been copied by the French army. 

For the benefit of the uninitiated I will 
explain that howitzers and the heavy field 
artillery, firing at different ranges, use different 
charges of explosive. 

These are so ordered that with the smallest 
charge the guns will shoot to a certain dis- 
tance at their maximum elevation. They 
will shoot the same distance with the second 
charge at the minimum elevation. The 
maximum range of the second charge is 
reached by the third charge with the mini- 
mum elevation and similarly with the full 
charge. Each charge is put up in a sealed 
packet, one packet making the first charge, 
two the second, three the third, and four the 
full charge. 

It is probably known to everybody at this 
time that guns are seldom sighted at the 
enemy. A horizontal line is established by 
a spirit level, and the range being approxi- 
mately ascertained, the gun is elevated a 
given number of degrees. To establish direc- 



THE RUSSIAN ARMY 155 

tion a point is chosen as nearly as possible 
directly back from the gun, such as a pine 
tree, or a spot blazed on a near-by tree, or a 
church steeple, and the gunner is instructed 
to point his gun so many degrees to the right 
or to the left of the reflection of this sight in 
an object glass. 

The commander of the battery establishes 
himself in some point of vantage, — a hill- 
top, or tree top, or possibly in an advance 
trench, and by telephone instructs his gunners. 
Automatic range-finders are sometimes used 
for the first shot, and I have seen a base line 
established and the range found by trigo- 
nometry, but after the first shot the range is 
corrected by the sight of the exploding shells. 

The enormous numbers of the Russian 
artillery have been completely equipped with 
all the most modern instruments of precision, 
such as the above-mentioned range finders 
and binocular glasses of twenty powers of 
magnification mounted on tripods and built 
in the form of periscopes for the better pro- 
tection of the observing officers, and tele- 



156 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

phones. The uninitiated will appreciate how 
splendid an achievement this was when they 
learn that the little British Expeditionary 
Force, hardly twice the size of the regular 
American army, and about one-twentieth 
of the force which fought on the Allied side 
at the battle of Marne, was almost entirely 
lacking in these modern appliances. 

The Russian foresight will also be better 
appreciated when it is understood that none 
of these instruments are made in Russia, 
and therefore could not have been supplied 
after the outbreak of war, any more than they 
could be supplied in America. Foresight 
stored up an enormous quantity of ammu- 
nition, so that through the early months of 
the war, according to the Allied plan, Russia 
was able to maintain a vigorous offensive 
all along the line. It is to be borne in mind 
that she maintained this offensive from August 
until April and never received a cartridge 
from overseas. 

The observer who wishes to understand the 
Russian infantry must be willing to set aside 




Typical Russian Reservist 



THE RUSSIAN ARMY 157 

his preconceived notions and his race preju- 
dice, both as to men and methods. 

In the first place, the Russian regiment 
consists of about four thousand men and is 
divided into three battalions, each approxi- 
mately as large as our regiments. This 
system would appear to be the best and is 
used by the best armies. 

The Russian infantry is equipped and 
trained to make the most of the Russian 
temperament and the Russian physique. 
Now the Russian physique is far ahead of 
any other in Europe. This is a difficult 
statement for any other nationality to admit. 
The Germans and Austrians have not made 
the statement, but they have acted upon the 
fact. 

Back in the time that Suvaroff led the 
Russian army all the way to Italy, and I do 
not know how much farther back, the Russian 
has had a tradition of fighting with the 
bayonet. Perhaps he has always shot less 
well than his enemy, but has certainly been 
his physical superior. I have been through 



158 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

the English, French, and Russian armies and 
I have seen thousands of Austrian and Ger- 
man prisoners. The average Russian soldier 
averages half a head taller than other sol- 
diers, weighs 25 pounds heavier, and is more 
athletic in build. What reason there may be 
for this I am not prepared to say, but state 
the fact as I saw it. Furthermore, the 
Russian does not think of rifle fire as we do 
and as the English do. He is trained in 
marksmanship and shoots the long range as 
well as any trained soldier, but to fire at a 
man ten feet away would not occur to him. 

The Russian morale is based on the theory 
of bayonet fighting, just as the military ideas 
of Frederick the Great turned upon the 
effect of fire. The Russian soldier lives and 
marches, retreats and charges and fires, with 
his bayonet always fixed on his rifle and fixed 
in his mind. Other nations remove the 
bayonet during fire fighting, as it interferes 
with aiming, both by weighting down the 
muzzle, and throwing a reflection in the 
soldier's eyes. The Russians have minimized 



THE RUSSIAN ARMY 159 

these effects, however, by making the bayonet 
short and light and bluing it like the barrel 
of the gun. It is almost invisible a few yards 
away and thus loses much of the moral effect 
attributed to l'arme blanche. The Russians, 
however, look upon the bayonet as an arm 
of execution and depend upon the terror 
caused by the use of it for effect. 

There is no possible question but the bayo- 
net is frequently used in this war. How dif- 
ferent from the experience of General Fun- 
ston, who records in his memoirs of two wars 
that he has seen only one man struck down 
by a bayonet ! 

Tradition and temperament have every- 
thing to do with fighting. They assert them- 
selves in the face of all conditions. 

It is very pretty to see a battalion of Russian 
infantry practising an attack. Their physi- 
cal perfection is such as to remind one of 
signal drill of a football squad ; indeed, they 
run forward in squads of thirteen men, then 
throwing themselves down, with their in- 
trenching tool, — a one-handed shovel, — 



160 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

they dig a hole for their elbows and pile up 
the excavated earth in a mound before them, 
so that in a few minutes only their eyes and 
foreheads over the tops of the rifles are exposed 
to horizontal fire. 

If the bayonet is the Russian infantryman's 
chief reliance, the intrenching tool is his best 
friend. 

When it comes to intrenching, nothing can 
be compared to the Russian regiment except- 
ing the Roman legions of old. The Russian 
soldier is a laboring man, accustomed to work- 
ing in the earth and forest. One night will 
put him safe underground with a roof to stop 
the fragments of shells bursting overhead. 

In the Carpathians I came to a position 
which had been occupied only forty hours 
before. Along the whole front was a kneel- 
ing trench, with perfect head cover and loop- 
holes every two feet. At the back of the 
trench was an opening so that the troops could 
swarm out quickly to meet an attack. 

When I was on the western front I saw no 
such head covering. The front side of the 



THE RUSSIAN ARMY 161 

trench was frequently excavated and shored 
up with wood to furnish protection from 
shell, splinters, shrapnel, bullets, and weather. 
An occasional loop-hole was provided for 
watching and sniping, but rifle fire was in- 
variably directed over the top. I asked par- 
ticularly about covered trenches under which 
fire could be maintained and was told that 
the English did not believe that from under 
them fire could be heavy enough or could be 
well enough directed. 

The conditions of war in the two theatres 
differ. There is an abundance of natural 
cover in Poland and Galicia to conceal the 
more visible type of trenches employed there. 
There is more and heavier artillery on the 
western front and high explosive shells are 
more frequently used, therefore it is more 
desirable to construct narrow open-topped 
trenches, which are harder to see than the 
wider covered type. 

Another, and perhaps more controlling 
reason, is that the English soldier puts a 
greater reliance on the bullet and the Rus- 

M 



162 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

sians ask nothing better than to get to work 
with the bayonet. 

The Russians are also very fond of the 
grenades and appear to have made better use 
of them than their allies. 

I have seen them under fire in their trenches 
and can add a word to the high praise for 
steadiness given to them by the German 
General von Morgan, who commands a Ger- 
man army corps before Warsaw. 

Railroads are few in Russia and the peas- 
ant does his travelling afoot ; no wonder, then, 
that he can outwalk any other infantry man. 

The equipment of the Russian soldier is 
the result of the experience of two hundred 
years. It is an extraordinary combination 
of usefulness and economy, and certainly 
shows up the equipment of the western armies 
for what it is, — the product of theorists 
and amateurs. 

The Russian has his rifle and his fixed 
bayonet; he carries 160 rounds of ammuni- 
tion; unless the weather is cold he carries 
his overcoat and his one-third of a shelter 




Austrian Prisoners 




Kazaks of the Caucasus 




German Prisoners 



THE RUSSIAN ARMY 163 

tent in a roll over his shoulder, and his in- 
trenching tool is on his hip. His knapsack 
is a pack-sack in which he carries his black 
bread, tea, and sugar. He has also an allow- 
ance of extra clothes, and being extraordi- 
narily cleanly, he generally violates the Arti- 
cles of the war by carrying more clean clothes 
than are prescribed. His uniform consists 
of a cap with a visor in summer, a fur cap in 
winter, a blouse like our flannel shirt, breeches, 
underclothes, socks, and boots. In winter 
he has additional foot and leg cover and a fur 
overcoat. 

Before going to Russia I had always 
imagined that the Russian soldier's boot was 
a clumsy affair and a hindrance to marching 
and activity. Nothing could be farther from 
the case. The leather is as flexible as kid, 
and the upper part more like the leather we 
use for gloves than for boots. Unques- 
tionably, it is a better protection against 
dust, mud, and water than any form of gaiter 
used in other armies. It has one fault, — 
its color. When a line of men in their olive- 



164 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

green uniforms are invisible in the woods or at 
a distance in the open, a black line of boots 
sometimes will reveal their position. I believe 
a new war will see the Russian army in 
"Russian leather." 

On the march the Russian soldier is fed 
from the field kitchen, — a huge cauldron in 
which the national soup or stew is cooked. 
This is composed of a ration of meat and 
grain and potatoes for each man with what- 
ever other vegetables the cook can lay his 
hands on. There is a specific ration for 
each man, but in practice during this war 
the limit has been as much as each man 
desired. 

Three advantages of this method of cook- 
ing are immediately apparent. Troops can 
be fed on the march. After the march supper 
is served to them without their having the 
further effort of cooking their meals, and hot 
soup can often be brought up on wheels to 
the actual firing line or to places in its im- 
mediate proximity. In the mountains the 
kitchen cannot always follow the troops and 



THE RUSSIAN ARMY 165 

there an excellent canned stew is substituted. 
Where the soldiers are for any length of time 
in a secure position the kitchen is given a rest 
and the men cook their own food. "The 
food is not as good," explained a staff officer, 
"but the cooking relieves the tedium of life 
in the trenches." 

These field kitchens are kept at a high 
state of cleanliness and efficiency and are 
constantly inspected. One day when I was 
at the front the inspector general, Ci Roberti, 
tried a sample from every pot of a regiment. 
Since a Russian regiment consists of four 
thousand men and every company has its 
individual kitchen, the general had plenty 
of soup that day. 

This special kitchen is an innovation which 
has been copied by other armies. Some say 
that the German kitchen is better, being 
divided into compartments and cooking sev- 
eral kinds of food. This may be necessary 
to satisfy the standard of living of the German 
soldier, but the extra weight must prove a 
serious handicap on bad roads. It is the aim 



166 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

of the Russian army to give the soldiers good, 
and better food, than they are accustomed to 
at home. There is certainly a military ad- 
vantage in being a simple people. 

Every Russian army regiment has a home 
town, after which it is named, and from which 
at least a large proportion of its soldiers are 
drawn. This gives it the advantage of hav- 
ing "people back home" to take a special 
interest in its welfare, to make special pres- 
ents to its wounded, and to fire its soldiers 
with letters of praise. 

Some of the Guard regiments are named 
after the largest cities, as of Petrograd, and 
after provinces, as of Finland, with the same 
result. 

The Russian regular army thus gets the 
same popular support that comes to our 
volunteers in time of war, but not to our 
regulars ; at the same time it has the training 
of regular soldiers. 

Any one can see the advantage of giving 
soldiers both training and popular support 
over our system of giving training to some 




Red Cross Wagon 




Siberian Transport Ponies 



THE RUSSIAN ARMY 167 

and popular support to others and both to 
neither. 

Every Russian regiment has a f£te day, 
which is a day set apart to celebrate either 
its creation, or, more likely, to commemorate 
some deed of great valor under arms. It 
should not be necessary to point out the 
value upon troops of calling to their attention 
the great exploits of those who have gone 
before and the demand for emulation. Bril- 
liant feats in history also are recalled in name 
and equipment. 

There is a Siberian regiment which stood 
in battle until, tradition says, blood flowed 
up to the boot tops. This regiment is dis- 
tinguished by a red band on the tops of the 
boots. There is a division which stood against 
odds of 4 to 1, and checked General van 
Damme after the battle of Dresden, con- 
tributing more than any other single feat 
of arms to the overthrow of Napoleon. The 
Prussian king gave to each of the survivors 
the Iron Cross. There are regiments famed 
for battles against the Turks, against the 



168 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Kirghiz, feats of arms as great and as un- 
known to us as the sacrifice of the Alamo is 
to Europe. 

The Russian regimental officers are very 
good, and upon this point I have not only my 
opinion, but those of professional American 
soldiers, who have had also an opportunity 
to see them in action. The relations between 
the officers and men are patriarchal. 

The Russian army has the staff principle 
developed in great detail. There is a great 
general staff, the staffs of commanders of 
groups of armies, staffs of army commanders, 
corps commanders, division commanders, bri- 
gade commanders, and a regimental staff. 
I have visited all of these except the staff 
of commanders of army groups. Everywhere 
I saw evidence of a high state of military 
education. I could perceive also that infor- 
mation of the military situation was inter- 
changed among the smaller and larger head- 
quarters in such a way that no catastrophe 
or interruption of communications would leave 
a unit paralyzed. 



THE RUSSIAN ARMY 169 

It is just this extraordinary ability to 
manoeuvre in action that has offset the Ger- 
man's superiority of railway facilities, — this, 
and probably a superiority of division and 
corps commanders because of the experience 
gained and selections made possible by the 
Japanese war. 



CHAPTER IX 

The Kazaks 

I have eaten your bread and salt. 

I went to Russia with the popular con- 
ception of the Kazaks, namely, that they were 
a nomad tribe from Central Asia, that they 
dressed in skins, that when they went to war 
they took their women with them ; in a word, 
that they were in approximately the same 
state of civilization as the Mexicans. 

When I arrived at the grand Headquarters 
I was several times asked to pick out Kazak 
officers, but was unable to do this. On my 
first trip to the front I was given an exhibi- 
tion drill by two sotnia, or, as we would call 
it, two troops, of Kazaks, and as I was at that 
time unfamiliar with the details of the Rus- 
sian uniform, I could not distinguish any dif- 
ference between the Kazaks and other soldiers. 

170 



THE KAZAKS 171 

That there was no apparent difference be- 
tween the Kazaks and other soldiers was such 
a surprise to me that in my despatch to 
America describing the trip I used the fol- 
lowing language : — 

"The Cossacks are humpy looking men 
with round fur caps and sheepskin coats? 
They never wash or shave ? Also, they have 
"more wives than teeth" ? 

The Commander-in-Chief was interested 
to know what impression I had received of 
the armies under his command, and as he 
did not read English asked me to have my 
writings translated. Unfortunately I did not 
have the translation made into French, which 
I could have read myself, but into Russian. 
The translator left out the question marks, 
and my statement of the prevailing American 
opinion of the Kazaks was written as my own 
recently formed opinion of them ! The docu- 
ment passed through several hands and the 
joke was too good to keep. 

One day at luncheon I found myself at a 
different table from usual, and in the com- 



172 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

pany of a gentleman in brown uniform, whom 
I had at first taken for the Belgian Military 
attache, and two as clean-cut young men as 
any university could produce. The con- 
versation shifted round to Kazaks, and to 
my article referring to the Kazaks. It then 
came out that my three companions were all 
Kazaks, — one a general commanding a regi- 
ment of the Guards, and two lieutenants. 
The lunch was followed by a visit to their 
barracks, where I saw a perfectly ordered 
camp. Some of the men were engaged in 
correcting the sights of their rifles, which had 
suffered during the campaign. Others were 
practising a new method of using machine 
guns. 

The officer in charge of the detachment was 
called upon to explain this to me, but his 
command of French was limited, and another 
officer, not attached to the machine guns, 
took up the tale and showed entire familiarity 
with the subject. 

From Kazak officers I received the fol- 
lowing outline of Kazak history : — 




Kazak Sabre Exercises 




Don Kazak Rough Riders 



THE KAZAKS 173 

After the Grand Duchy of Moscow had 
become strong enough to throw off the Mongol 
yoke, the country was continually invaded 
by bands of Mongol and Turkish raiders, 
who came in quest of plunder and, in par- 
ticular, in quest of slaves to be sold in the 
Crimean market. 

The roads of invasion followed the rivers 
Ural, Volga, Don, and Dnieper. 

Against them the kings of Moscovy and 
Poland built regular fortifications and named 
their garrisons "Kazaks." Around and be- 
yond these forts along each of the rivers 
communities grew and took the name "Free 
Kazaks." These Kazaks were at once men 
whose temperaments led them to the wild 
life of guerilla warfare and who objected to 
the restraints of life near the centre of gov- 
ernment. The substance of these communi- 
ties were Russians, but all nationalities were 
admitted, history pointing to the presence 
even of a few Englishmen. 

For years the Kazaks of the Dniester 
acknowledged the king of Poland as overlord. 



174 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The Kazaks of the Don, the Volga, and the 
Ural always acknowledged the Czar, from 
whom they obtained arms and ammunition, 
and who, in turn, was glad to avail himself 
of these professional warriors. 

Nowhere did the Kazaks pay any land 
taxes. In the early years they acknowledged 
no law but their own. 

Elections of officers were held every year. 
Every Kazak was eligible to become a Captain 
of a sotnia ; every Captain was eligible to 
become a colonel. The Ataman (headman) 
was elected for life, which was a precarious 
tenure, as he always led in battle. 

The Kazaks were exhorted to obedience 
on the ground that some day each one might 
become the Ataman. 

At one time the king of Poland attempted 
to organize a regular body of Kazak troops, 
giving them the privileges of Polish nobility, 
but this plan proved unsuccessful. 

The Kazaks of the Dnieper had a central 
organization, which is the most picturesque 
feature of Kazak history. A celibate organi- 



THE KAZAKS 175 

zation resembling somewhat the Knights Tem- 
plars and somewhat the Turkish Janissaries, 
this band lived in an intrenched camp in the 
marches of the Dnieper River called the 
"Setch." 

The warriors of the Setch were a form of 
regulars or permanent force of Kazaks, while 
the other Kazaks living in their own villages, 
or even in the villages with other Russians, 
were like minute men to be called to action 
at a moment's notice. 

The Setch lived on the booty of warfare, 
and allowed outside merchants to trade, 
exchanging great quantities of plunder for 
small quantities of wine and the necessities of 
life. 

To this body of free companions any man 
might come by acknowledging the supremacy 
of the Czar and the Orthodox Church. 

Hilarious fellowship was the rule of life 
in the Setch ; rigorous discipline and total 
abstinence the rule in campaign. A drop 
of wine or a sign of fear in war were offences 
immediately punished with death. 



176 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The Kazaks had the same warning signal 
by fire to announce the invasion of an enemy 
that has been prevalent on all border com- 
munities in ancient times. If the permanent 
force was not strong enough to check the 
enemy, it made a counter-attack into his 
country, while troops were gathered in the 
interior to repel the invasion. 

As may be expected, the Kazaks did not 
confine themselves to the defence of Rus- 
sian territory, but made many an invasion 
across the Black Sea into Turkey. These 
were repudiated and supported by the Czar, 
very much as the exploits of the English 
buccaneers were repudiated and supported by 
Queen Elizabeth at the same period. 

In the war between Charles XII of Sweden 
and Peter the Great the Kazaks remained 
neutral, although the Ataman Mazeppa sided 
with the invader. In punishment for this 
Peter the Great razed the Setch to the ground. 

In the reign of Catherine II a peasant of 
the Don Cossacks, Pugacheff, declared him- 
self to be the Czar, Peter the Third, and led 



THE KAZAKS 177 

a revolt. He was overcome and beheaded 
and Catherine undertook the re-organization 
of the Kazaks. 

The Kazaks of the Dnieper and Volga 
were removed to the Turkish frontier between 
the Black and Caspian seas. They are now 
known as the Kazaks of the Caucasus, and 
are the only Kazaks to wear a different uniform 
from other Russian troops. They wear the 
long-skirted coat of the Circassians, caps of 
the shape of the Turkish fez made of lambs' 
wool. The swords may be as ornate as 
the Kazak's purse can buy, and he can use 
his own taste in the color of his uniform. 

Catherine also ended all powers of self- 
government of the Kazaks of the Don and 
the Ural and incorporated them under the 
bureaucracy. As a recompense she gave 
wide and rich lands, including the larger 
part of the rivers from which caviar is pro- 
duced. 

While the government of the Kazaks is now 
autocratic, their habit of life is socialistic, 
the sources of income being held in common. 



178 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Lands are allotted in rotation to each family 
according to its need, and the individual 
can have private property only in his savings 
from the crops. As the Kazak lands are 
wide and rich, the entire community is 
wealthy. Every Kazak is well off and aside 
from military service is not hard driven for a 
living. 

In 1873 the Prussian system of military 
training was adopted amongst the Kazaks 
with modifications, there being three years 
training, twelve years in the active army, and 
the balance of the Kazak's life in reserve. 

The Kazak is more of a trained soldier now 
than other trained soldiers of military Europe 
from his habit of mind, whereby he considers 
himself a soldier always, and not merely dur- 
ing his term of service, and from the fact 
that he knows himself to be better off than 
his neighbor, and knows this advantage comes 
from his military superiority and can be re- 
tained only by continued superiority. 

Kazak officers must graduate from the 
cavalry schools just as other cavalry offi- 



THE KAZAKS 179 

cers, and thus they add all that modern mili- 
tary science can give to their home training. 

While I was visiting the Guards Corps 
the officers of a Kazak battery of Horse 
Artillery gave a party. 

First were mounted games. Fences had 
been erected, ditches dug, among other things 
a most severe in-and-out obstacle. This was 
something with which I was familiar. The 
performances of horses and men were splendid. 

Next followed a competition with the 
sabre, which consisted in cutting willow 
branches, slicing potatoes, and picking up on 
the point a bag of straw representing a man 
lying on the ground. If the drill had been 
one of a few picked men, it might not have 
been remarkable. The fact that all the men 
of a battery of artillery who had not recently 
practised this particular exercise showed a 
universal excellence was an indication of the 
value of the soldiers. 

Then came rough riding, beginning with 
such simple things as standing upon the saddle 
at full gallop and Roman riding, and two 



180 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

men picking up a third dismounted comrade, 
and a dismounted man leaping behind a gal- 
loping companion. 

This was followed by such gymnastics as 
I have never seen in any circus, the men 
swinging from the pommels of their saddles 
while the horses were in full gallop and leap- 
ing from one side of their horses to the other 
side, and turning somersaults on the backs 
as on parallel bars, and — the greatest feat of 
all, — a six foot, one-hundred-eighty -pound 
sergeant with a breast covered with decora- 
tions and crosses of St. George performed all 
these things with a sabre clenched in his 
teeth. The last feature was picking up a 
handkerchief from the ground at full run. 
The Kazaks do not withdraw one foot from 
the stirrup and take the stirrup leather in 
the hand as we do in this trick, but fasten 
the stirrups together under the horse and 
lower themselves and pull themselves back 
in the saddle entirely with their legs. The 
trick of picking up the handkerchief was 
very badly done until the colonel of the 




Don Kazak and Boy Scout 



THE KAZAKS 181 

battery took the hint and put five roubles 
in each handkerchief, after which there were 
no more failures. 

After the athletics, we proceeded to the 
company kitchens to sample the soldiers' 
food, which was good enough for anybody, 
and then we proceeded to the battery, which 
was cocked up on end to attack aircraft, in 
the same manner as described in a previous 
chapter. 

We also looked at the officers' mounts. 
These were all of thoroughbred stock which 
had been introduced into the Kazak country 
some years before. I was surprised when 
the Colonel told me that these horses, which 
had been acclimatized to Kazak life, stood 
the hardships of war as well as any. They 
could, of course, run circles around the 
average cavalry mount. 

Every Kazak soldier provides his own 
uniform and his own horse, of which he 
naturally takes the best care, and which he 
has trained beyond anything within my 
experience. 



182 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

No Kazak uses the curb bit or spurs, but 
if encouragement is necessary it is given with 
a whip, much like the quirt of our Western 
plains. 

At dinner we had caviar from the Volga 
and fish that had been caught in the Narew 
River that day and many other good things 
to eat. 

Just as the meal started the giant sergeant 
marched into the room with about twenty 
picked voices from among the soldiers, while 
the rest of the battery stood outside and 
joined in the choruses. 

The sergeant in a remarkable tenor carried 
the air of the chorus songs, but men with 
even better voices than he sang the solos. 

We listened to many tales of the adven- 
tures of Stenka Rasin, the Robin Hood of 
the Volga, and followed his career up to the 
point when, having fallen in love with a 
Circassian princess he had taken prisoner, 
he was content to float down the Volga, rob- 
bing no more; but being reproached by his 
companions for his lack of enterprise he re- 



THE KAZAKS 183 

covered his spirit and threw the young lady 
into the river. 

At the end of this tragic tale the singers 
filed out, and other soldiers carried into the 
room and laid on the floor what appeared to 
be the body of a man entirely swathed in 
blankets. I was beginning to wonder what 
strange rite this might be and whether a vic- 
tim of the day's sharp-shooting was being 
brought before us, when the arms of the body 
under the blankets were raised, displaying 
two manikins made up in the costume of a 
Kazak man and woman. 

The play was a domestic sketch. A flirta- 
tion was followed by a quarrel. The lady 
slapped the gentleman's face, and he, with 
great presence of mind, immediately knocked 
her down. The lady's clothes were sadly 
disarranged by the fall, which evidently was 
not part of the play, for the sergeant, who was 
stage-managing the performance, stepped for- 
ward and modestly pulled down the skirt. 
On the floor the injured wife lay and refused 
to move until her spouse, leaning over, set 



184 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

her upon her feet. He then insisted that 
she kneel and apologize, to which she replied 
with a vigorous shake of the head, but upon 
his threatening a further chastisement she 
thought better of it, and not once but twice 
bowed herself in humility. Whereupon he 
bowed in his turn. The reconciled couple 
embraced, and four soldiers carried out both 
actors and "stage." 

Then came in a dancer, — a man on 
rubber legs, who danced to the music of an 
accordion. I was told he was the best dancer 
in the battery, and was willing to concede 
he was the best dancer in the army. 

Once I was put out of countenance by the 
request that I should show the officers the 
national dances of America. Ideas of a cake 
walk floated through my mind, but were not 
expressed, and to my further surprise the 
colonel himself announced that he would 
dance in my honor. 

The colonel was past the half-way mark 
to threescore and ten, and probably could 
not have danced so long as the young soldier, 



THE KAZAKS 185 

but faced by a lieutenant he went to work, 
and while he kept it up danced better than 
the battery champion. 

I was asked to address the troops, but, of 
course, was unable to do so, and Colonel 
Englhart, Colonel of the Staff, steeplechase 
rider, and member of the Duma, spoke in my 
stead. I do not know what he said, but 
apparently the speech was a success; for 
both he and I were lifted upon the shoulders 
of the gunners and cheered while we emptied 
a glass of Kazak wine. 

Following this a bearded trooper imitated 
in voice and gesture a popular music-hall 
comedienne, and the entertainment was closed 
with a chorus, one hundred voices joining in 
the war song of the Kazaks of the Don. 

It was a band of Kazaks which took pos- 
session of Siberia and gave it to the Czar, 
and also which discovered the Pacific Ocean. 
As the Empire has pushed into Asia, Kazak 
communities have been established all along 
the frontier. They are, indeed, bands of 
organized frontiersmen. 



186 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Their prowess in war is attested by the 
fear of them spread in other countries which 
have warred on Russia. The tradition of the 
Kazaks is still among the Swedes. Napoleon 
said, "Europe will be all republican or all 
Kazak." 

After my return from Russia I was as- 
tounded to hear from a European military 
officer that the Kazaks were an irregular 
body of guerillas, useful to harry a defeated 
army, but unable to contend with regular 
troops. 

The truth about this is that they are to 
regular troops what regular troops are to 
militia. Fortunately I have brought from 
Russia more than my opinion ; whoever is 
unwilling to depart from his preconceived 
notions should see the moving pictures I have 
taken of a Kazak charge and of the English 
General Paget reviewing the Kazaks of the 
Guard. 

The Kazaks are frontiersmen. We know 
the superiority of frontiersmen over all other 
troops of equal training. In addition to this 



THE KAZAKS 187 

the Kazaks are an hereditary military organi- 
zation like the Samurai of Japan. Where 
other European troops are trained for three 
years these are trained from childhood. They 
bring to the army more personal military 
knowledge than the average soldier takes 
with him when he leaves after three years. 
They then undergo as much training as is 
given to the ignorant recruits. 

The result is that the Kazaks are a body 
of soldiers such as exist nowhere else in the 
world. I speak with confidence, for I have 
been to see all the Allies' armies, I have been 
a horseman for twenty-five years, and have 
played polo constantly in the last twelve. 

There is no considerable body of troops in 
the world that can, mounted, offer any serious 
resistance to the Kazaks. 



CHAPTER X 

With the "Corps de la Garde" 

I was ten days putting on paper my obser- 
vations upon the Russian army and in com- 
piling the information from which I wrote the 
history of the war to date. 

The completion of this work was contem- 
poraneous with the beginning of the Austro- 
German advance upon Tarnow. 

I asked to be attached to the army of 
General Dimitrieff, which was receiving the 
first assault, but was told that the forces in 
that theatre of the war had instructions to 
retire, and that they would be much too 
occupied between fighting and retreating to 
have time to look after a stranger. 

As compensation I was given leave to visit 
the Corps de la Garde on another front. 
This invitation was thankfully accepted, as 

188 



THE "CORPS DE LA GARDE" 189 

it would give me further time to study the 
Russian army from within, and I hoped that 
on a further acquaintance I might some day 
be allowed to accompany an active force upon 
the march. 

And so I went to the headquarters of the 
Guards Corps in a good-sized town that could 
easily have furnished luxurious quarters for 
all the officers if these were desired. The 
headquarters proper were in a school house. 
One room was given over to the disposition 
of troops, maps papered the walls, and the 
officers employed on this work slept several 
to a room in the building, so as to be imme- 
diately available in any emergency. They 
all slept on the regulation camp beds, differ- 
ing only in detail from ours. 

General Bezobrazoff , commanding the corps, 
was the only officer to have a room for him- 
self. He slept in his office. 

Another room was used for the Provost 
Court. 

While I was there the trial of an alleged 
spy took place. Every one, including the 



190 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

official defender, was convinced of his guilt, 
but the court held the evidence insufficient 
for conviction, so the man — an Austrian — 
was sent to a detention camp. 

The case against him was that he had 
entered Russian territory after the outbreak 
of war without a passport and had come into 
the lines of the army without giving notice 
of his nationality, without having any friends 
in the neighborhood, without any reasonable 
excuse for so doing. He was acquitted be- 
cause no act of espionage was proved. I 
am curious to know what courts-martial of 
the other warring armies have done in similar 
cases. 

The room over the staff office is used as 
dining-room. Here at two long oilcloth- 
covered tables sit all the officers from the 
general commanding down to sixteen-year- 
old Count Zamoiski. The youngster has the 
rank of a non-commissioned officer. He is 
personal aide to the general and has won the 
St. George Cross for soldiers of the second 
Order for courage under fire. 



THE "CORPS DE LA GARDE" 191 

The commander lunches at twelve and 
dines at seven-thirty, but as duties bring 
officers in at all hours of day and night, some 
one can be found in the dining-room at almost 
any time. 

The procedure at table is a mixture of 
formality and informality. Whenever the 
commander addresses any officer, that per- 
son rises and remains standing during the 
conversation. This applies as much to major- 
generals as to lieutenants. 

On the other hand, the young end of the 
table is as hilarious as an American college 
dining-room. At an unusual burst of laughter 
the general stops his conversation and smiles 
down the table. Sometimes he asks the sub- 
ject of amusement. He says it helps him to 
renew his youth. 

Upon one occasion he asked me if I was 
not reminded of a big school. It is a school, 
— the school of the Russian army. 

How young those officers are, and how like 
our college sophomores as they pour their 
milk from wine bottles supplied by a solemn- 



192 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

looking old orderly who played the same joke 
upon their fathers in the war of '77. 

When will some far-seeing college president 
furnish a similar training for our youth, so we 
will not be without officers when the time 
comes that we have to fight for our institu- 
tions and our firesides? 

Some, not all, of the older officers take 
wine with their meals, sometimes a glass, 
sometimes two, never much. 

The war has called back to the colors many 
retired officers. One of them is a member of 
the Duma and also a celebrated steeplechase 
rider. Another who served in the Turkish 
war retired later to manage his personal 
affairs. It was hard for him not to return 
for the Japanese war, but his children were of 
such an age he could not leave them. Now 
that he has a boy of twenty-two to take 
charge at home, he is back at the front in his 
sixty-third year, cheerfully serving with less 
rank than they sons of some of his former 
comrades in arms. 

The first officer I met I had seen before. 




M 
o 
O 



Q 
M 
<j 

o 



Q 
<! 

o 
O 



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M 
M 
O 

si 

H 
ffl 

o 



THE "CORPS DE LA GARDE" 193 

He was Colonel Rodanko, the first prize 4 
winner at Madison Square Garden two years 
ago. 

It was my pleasure to spend a week in this 
company. Two officers moved out of a room 
and one left his bed for me. Protests that 
the hotel was perfectly good were unavailing 
and I never learned the identity of my bene- 
factors. The general assigned one of his 
orderlies, an African from Abyssinia, to take 
care of me, saying truthfully that it would 
make me feel at home. 

General Bezobrazoff at his dinner table is 
like an indulgent parent. But stories are 
still told of his dash as a young officer. And 
the way he put his regiments into the fight 
at Warsaw will command a chapter in the 
permanent military history of the war. 

Both he and the Duke of Mecklenburg, 
chief of artillery, were more than kind in 
furnishing me with military instruction and 
the new lessons learned in this war. 

Fortunately the Seminovski regiment held 
its fete while I was at Lomza, and General 



194 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Bezobrazoff was kind enough to invite the 
British artillery attache, Lieutenant Colonel 
Ellershaw, and me to the ceremony. 

The morning of the fete we went to the 
front to see the practice of a new type of 
field artillery. We were so interested in its 
performance as to fail to note the passage of 
time. Thus we missed the assembly of the 
troops. When we arrived the regiment was 
already drawn up in hollow square for a 
Solemn Mass. 

In an orchard had been erected the two 
altars which the Greek service requires. One 
was in a line of the troops, the other in the 
centre of the square. Near the first were the 
choir, chosen singers from the regiment; at 
the second, the priests with their high collars 
and flowing robes, some of white, some of 
yellow. In the centre of the square stood the 
general commanding the corps, and behind 
him his staff and the commander of the regi- 
ment. Beside him on his left, upon a spirited 
thoroughbred racehorse, sat a grave man with 
pointed beard and thinning hair. It was the 



THE "CORPS DE LA GARDE" 195 

Grand Duke Boris, who had visited the 
United States as a young man twelve years 
ago. The change these years had wrought 
in him reminded me forcibly of the lapse of 
time. 

At a word of command the troops grounded 
arms, at another word they removed their 
caps. The service began. The service was 
intoned throughout, and was assisted from 
time to time by the voices of the choir. The 
soldiers neither sang nor prayed audibly, but 
their ardent participation in the ceremony 
could be seen from their moving lips and the 
devout way in which they made the sign of 
the cross. 

The service was conducted in Russian, and 
therefore was unintelligible to me except that 
I could tell when prayers were being made 
for the Emperor by the intoned "Nicolas 
Alexandra vitch," and for the Commander-in- 
Chief from the words "Nicolas Nicolai'itch." 
Prayers were also made for the Grand Duke 
Constantine Constantinovitch, who was on 
the point of death and who has since died. 



196 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

I had attended military Masses before, 
notably at the headquarters of the 5th Army 
and at the Great General Staff, where the 
Grand Duke, Commander-in-Chief, partici- 
pated in the royal box and where the congre- 
gation consisted of the staff and all the Cossack 
Guard. 

The Cossacks are said to be the most 
devout of the Russians, but I have been im- 
pressed by the unanimity of the religious 
feeling which permeates the whole army. 

At the close of the service the chief priest 
advanced with a golden crucifix to the com- 
mander general, but he indicated the Grand 
Duke Boris, who was first to kiss the crucifix, 
and the priest kissed his hand. Next it was 
presented to officers in order of rank, and each 
was blessed by the priest with holy water. 

It being impossible for the entire regiment, 
or as it often happens an entire army corps, to 
be blessed individually at public Mass, the 
chief priest, followed by the General and Staff, 
marched round the inside of the hollow square, 
carrying a small pine branch. This he dipped 



THE "CORPS DE LA GARDE" 197 

in a bowl of holy water carried by an assistant 
and threw the spray over the bowed heads of 
the soldiers. 

Following the final blessing the altars were 
removed, the choir members resumed their 
places in the ranks, the commandant of the 
day took station in the middle of the square. 
Caps were resumed, troops came to attention, 
the shout of the battlefield replaced the in- 
toning of the church service. 

Followed ceremonies particular to the regi- 
ment. At some of these only the troops 
came to the salute; at others troops and the 
officers; at others the officers alone. Being 
in the front rank of the visitors, I found my- 
self somewhat lost when to salute and when 
not. Stepping back and turning to the left, I 
hoped to model my conduct after that of the 
British attache, to find that officer had been 
copying my mistakes in the same manner. A 
Russian officer perceiving our embarrassment 
took station where we could see him to model 
our conduct upon. 

The commandant in the centre called for 



198 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

cheers for various men and things, which were 
heartily responded to by 4000 throats, and 
he called for cheers for the Emperor, to which 
the woods resounded until my arm grew 
tired from maintaining the salute, while the 
band played the National Hymn not once 
but several times. 

A review followed. 

I suppose readers will become weary of my 
constant allusion to the military exercises 
which seemed to me foolish formalities before 
I came to war. They do look foolish at home, 
but in sound of the enemy's guns, even the 
strut step has its value. The straightened 
back and lifted head react favorably upon 
the nervous system of the man about to go 
under fire. The eager response to orders is 
to a regiment what snap is to a football team. 
A regiment that has learned its drill feels a 
thrill of conscious strength as it wheels into 
line, and is built up to resist the terrors which 
the individual courage could not withstand. 

The parade of a Guard regiment is a remark- 
able sight. The officers are the average size 



THE "CORPS DE LA GARDE" 199 

of man, but the soldiers are a head taller and 
full fifty pounds heavier to the man. This is 
in marked contrast to the English regiments, 
where I have remarked that the officers are 
notably taller than the men — a fact which 
the German sharp-shooters have not been 
slow to discover, and which similarity of uni- 
forms cannot hide. 

I noticed that many of the officers were 
very young, and that not a few walked with 
a limp, which could not be hidden before the 
reviewing stand. Small wonder ! The regi- 
ment had seventy officers at the outbreak of 
the war, and has suffered seventy -four casual- 
ties. 

After the review there was a reception for 
the officers at which I snapped a photograph 
of the Grand Duke Boris and General Bezo- 
brazoff. Then while the regiment picnicked 
under the trees, a birthday dinner was held 
indoors. The table was not large enough for 
all, so only the officers of higher rank were 
seated; the captains and lieutenants, except 
a foreign attache, stood. 



200 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

This fete formed the occasion of meeting 
between friends whom war had separated, 
and was pleasant to see. Those who had 
received promotion or decoration for distin- 
guished service were the recipients of hearty 
congratulations in which no appearance of 
jealousy was visible. In particular, General 
Ettor, a native of Finland, received news that 
he had been appointed aide-de-camp to the 
Emperor. 

Various toasts were drunk, beginning with 
the health of the Czar and ending with the 
toast to England, the king of England and the 
British army, in honor of the British military 
attache. Then as he stood the band played 
"Rule Britannia." Noticing that an Ameri- 
can was present word was hurriedly sent to 
the toast-master to include our country, 
and similar hurried instructions were sent 
to the band. The Toast-master gave the 
toast, "America, President Wilson, and the 
American Army." And while I, the sole 
American, stood, the young officers shouted 
with fellowship, and the band outside strained 
to the tune of the "Star-spangled Banner." 



THE "CORPS DE LA GARDE" 201 

As we drove back to our headquarters, we 
saw the regiment at play. Some were play- 
ing Two Villages, the Russian ninepins, some 
were swinging on the parallel bars and the 
horizontal bar, while the new recruits had 
procured the services of non-commissioned 
officers and were spending their holiday in 
practising the attack, which little fact would 
have given me an insight into the morale of 
the army if at this stage of the war I had 
needed any. 

Such an organization as the Imperial Guard 
would be impossible, of course, in a republic. 
It is the heart of the army in Russia, and very 
similar organizations hold the same positions 
in Prussia and Japan. 

The idea of an Imperial Guard in Russia 
originated with Peter the Great, who enrolled 
the first regiment. Other Emperors have 
added to it until it comprises a corps of three 
infantry divisions with artillery, and a divi- 
sion of cavalry with horse artillery. Among 
the cavalry are certain regiments and batteries 
of Cossacks of the Guard. 



202 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The soldiers of the Guard are the picked 
men of the entire Empire. Once assigned to 
the Guard, they are divided among the differ- 
ent regiments according to certain physical 
characteristics. 

For instance, all the snub-nosed men belong 
to the regiment of the Emperor Paul, who was 
snub-nosed. 

One regiment gets the biggest of the Guards- 
men, it is a regiment of giants ; to another all 
the c rkest men are given, and so on. 

The officers of the Guard are the most 
privileged men of the Empire. 

Most of them are graduates of the Corps 
des Pages, the school of Court pages. The 
pupils of this school are the Knights of 
Malta. That order elected the Emperor 
Paul to be their head, and he carried on 
the formula of the ancient institution in this 
way. 

Entrance to the school is restricted to — 

(1) Sons of Knights of Malta, former pupils. 

(2) Sons of generals and of lieutenant- 

generals — but not of major-generals. 



THE "CORPS DE LA GARDE" 203 

(3) Boys of families which have been noble 
for one hundred years or more. 

The pupils are pages of the Imperial 
family. The two highest in studies are pages 
of the Emperor, the next are pages of the 
Empress Dowager, the next pages of the 
Empress, the remainder pages of the Grand 
Dukes and Duchesses, those of highest rank 
in scholarship being attached to the Grand 
Duke of highest rank, and so on. 

The Corps des Pages is the best v .iitary 
school in Russia. Its course is seven years, 
during the first of which the pupil may live 
with his parents if they are in Petrograd, but 
the older boys must live in the barracks. 

Any graduate of the Corps des Pages has the 
requisite education to become an officer of 
the Guards. He then makes application for 
membership in one of the regiments. If his 
father has been a member of the regiment, 
he enters by right ; if not, the officers of the 
regiment decide whether they want him. 

In some regiments the system of election 
by balls is used. When a name is presented 



204 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

each officer of the regiment casts a white, a 
red, or a black ball. The candidate must 
have at least twice as many white balls as 
black balls. The red balls are not counted. 

The regimental officers also have the right 
to expel a member for any act deemed in- 
jurious to the dignity of the regiment, or 
even for being an unpleasant comrade. The 
commonest reason for expulsion is for marry- 
ing a woman of low rank. In one case a 
Guard officer was expelled for marrying the 
daughter of a colonel of police. In some 
regiments wives must be elected in the same 
way as their husbands. 

A Guards officer leaving the Guard in 
this way has the option of retiring or of ac- 
cepting the next higher grade in the army. 
There are no majors in Russia and no lieu- 
tenant-colonels in the Guard, battalions of 
the Guard being commanded by colonels. 
The regiments of the Guard are commanded 
by major-generals, there being no brigadiers 
in Russia. The regimental commander is 
usually taken from a different regiment, as it 



THE "CORPS DE LA GARDE" 205 

is considered difficult for an officer to exercise 
regimental command over his comrades. 

An exception is in the distinguished family 
of Ettor, where both father and son have com- 
manded the Seminovski regiment in which 
they served as junior officers. 

The regimental commander has charge of 
all military regulation, serious matters coming 
before a court martial. 

Social matters are regulated by an officers' 
meeting under the presidency of the senior 
colonel. The exception is in the question of 
a duel, where the permission of the regimental 
commander is required — and is hard to get. 

Promotion in the Guard is entirely by 
seniority, but as the law requires a certain 
proportion of the regiments of the army to be 
commanded by colonels of the Guard, promo- 
tion is rapid. Whenever one encounters a 
young army regimental commander, he may 
be nearly sure that the officer is from the 
Guard. 

Before assuming new rank every officer 
must pass an examination. He may even, 



20S WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

by study in the proper school, pass from one 
arm of the service to another. 

With the advantage of superior early edu- 
cation, of more rapid promotion in the lower 
grades, with easier access to those in power, 
the Guardsmen have great advantages over 
the officers of the army. As a result the one 
Corps de la Garde produces a large majority 
of the generals. The advantage, however, is 
only the advantage of opportunity. Unfit men 
are not consciously promoted. If appearance 
of merit procures high rank, demonstration of 
lack of fitness leads to instant dismissal. Of 
this fact the fate of the erstwhile famous 
General Renenkampf is a fair example. 

The four ranking officers in the Russian army 
to-day are a Grand Duke, an untitled noble- 
man from the Guard, and two peasant sons 
from the army. No one denies that each of 
these is the best man obtainable for his place. 

Two divisions make an army corps, four 
army corps an army; six armies a group. 
A brother of the Czar commands a division in 
a group generaled by the son of a peasant. 



CHAPTER XI 

Trips from the Corps Headquarters 

When I first arrived at the Guards Corps 
there was some doubt whether I was to be 
allowed to visit the front. I took advantage 
of the time it took to get specific permission 
to visit the organization back of the line. My 
investigation impressed me with the great 
advantage of an organized nation at war 
over a nation defended by a professional 
army. The first frees all its fighting men for 
action while the second must devote numbers 
and energy to the work of the rear. 

Furthermore the work of the most com- 
petent people offered freely is more efficient 
than that of salaried employes. 

To the fact that Russia is a nation at war, 
not a nation with only its army at war, may 
be attributed the extraordinary completeness 

207 



208 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

of its organization back of the fighting line — 
an organization not carried in the army 
manuals and whose existence is unknown in 
Petrograd, even in Warsaw. 

Members of the Duma are largely engaged 
in this work, as are a great part of the busi- 
ness men and landowners, whose age or lack 
of experience keeps them from serving in 
the active army. The larger part of these 
serve along the principal lines of communi- 
cation, from dressing stations to division 
hospitals or corps hospitals, on the hospital 
trains, in the big cities. There are as many 
more employed among the relief stations 
along the rear of the armies. 

In back of the firing line is a vast traffic 
of ammunition, of supplies, of soldiers and 
horses arriving to fill the losses, of slightly 
wounded going to the rear on foot or in 
emptied transport wagons, of convalescents 
returning to the front. 

To care for these are a number of rest 
stations dotted about five miles apart. At 
every one of these, an immense kettle of 



TRIPS FROM HEADQUARTERS 209 

soup and a mountain range of black bread 
awaits the hungry. For soldier and civilian 
alike, for transport driver and for refugee, 
but one requirement is asked — "Wash." 
At each of these places is provided a trough, 
soap, and towel. In the larger posts, a bath 
has been set up and the night-bound traveller 
can take a bath if he wants to, if he doesn't 
want to he must. At the larger posts also 
are found hospitals of a few beds where casual 
invalids are cared for and sent to the main 
hospitals. 

In the ones I visited, the equipment was 
complete, even to newspapers. 

Chapels are generally erected in buildings 
when these are available, otherwise in tents. 
I took a good picture of one chapel made from 
pine branches. 

One day I visited six of these stations in 
company of Colonel Simond Norzimoff of 
the Seminovski regiment. 

When I was ready to stop I was asked to 
visit a few more so that I could testify to 



210 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

their existence to the representative of one 
of the world's most perfect armies who had 
expressed a belief that some that he had seen 
were "planted" to impress the military 
attaches on their tour. 

The most pretentious station I saw that 
day was at the rail head. Here, in addition 
to the structures heretofore described, was an 
officers' club house. There were cots for 
the benighted and stacks of illustrated news- 
papers. Here was a buffet of every known 
kind of cold food. 

Here also was a tea urn presided over by a 
pretty girl, who doubtless holds the world's 
record of cups of tea poured in a single day, 
both grand total and served to one man. 
The lieutenant that we found and left there 
took, to my actual count — but that is not 
your business or mine either. 

The number and the service rendered by 
these young girls should be the subject of a 
poem. There are older women, too, many 
officers' wives, and many officers' widows. 
The lady who is in charge of their work took 



TRIPS FROM HEADQUARTERS 211 

us to the evacuation hospital where wounded 
were kept for shipment to the rear. It is in 
an old freight shed and has been the target 
for many bomb attacks. 

Fortunately there have not yet been any 
casualties among the women. 

The lady who has given up the drawing- 
room for the dressing room and says that 
she will never return to the former, was 
emphatic in her denunciation of the bomb 
attacks on hospitals. 

"Why don't you concentrate the prisoner 
wounded here ? " asked a man present. 

"Oh," she replied with a visible shudder, 
"God would not like that." 

My last night at the front was made de- 
lightful by an invitation to dine with the 
regimental mess of General Ettor and ac- 
ceptance was made possible by the Red Cross 
putting an automobile at my disposal. 

I arrived at the beautiful Polish villa which 
the general used as his headquarters just at 
sunset, and came upon a scene more suggestive 
of the Louis XVI pictures than of grim war. 



212 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Before the villa was a wide lawn, and 
flowering bushes dotted its surface. The 
owner in departing had left behind a number 
of Polish collie dog puppies that gambolled 
over the ground and fawned upon the visitors. 

The general was sitting under the trees 
as though he were at his own home in peace 
times ; indeed, my visit reminded him of a 
previous occasion when some Americans had 
dined at his home, and the smallness of the 
world was shown by the fact that the visitors 
had included Sheldon Whitehouse, now Secre- 
tary to the American Legation at Athens, — a 
college mate of mine. 

When I had last visited the General his 
regiment was occupying a different position 
and his headquarters was in a peasant's hut. 

The pictures I had had taken of him on 
that occasion all failed, so now I tried my 
amateur luck in the uncertain light, and 
obtained a splendid likeness of the man who 
originated the idea of using his prisoners as 
reserves. 

The dinner was to me like meeting old 



TRIPS FROM HEADQUARTERS 213 

friends ; for, although I had only seen these 
men once before, acquaintances ripen rapidly 
at the front. 

On my right at table was the officer com- 
manding the cavalry of this regiment; for, 
as an innovation of this war, each regiment 
of the Guards has sixty mounted men. At 
the outbreak of war this dashing soldier 
was a professor of philosophy in a univer- 
sity. He had, however, the benefit of a 
military education and exchanged his gown 
for a tunic with enthusiasm. 

He was the fourth civilian in time of peace 
to whom my attention was called, the other 
three being Colonel Nicolas Beaieff, professor 
of metallurgy, who had been kind enough to 
act as interpreter for me when in the second 
army; the commander of the 256th Regiment 
of Infantry, whose name I have forgotten, 
but who was pointed out to me by General 
Zakharoff, an engineer graduate of a mili- 
tary school who had retired to private life, 
but joining the army at the outbreak of war, 
he showed such distinct ability as to mount 



214 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

rapidly to command of a regiment. There 
was also Colonel Englhart, to whom I have 
frequently referred in this book. 

The dessert that evening was particularly 
delicious, and was nothing but plain milk 
warmed for an hour in an oven and then al- 
lowed to sour for three days. 

News of the declaration of war by Italy 
came during the meal and was a welcome 
break in the bulletins of the retreat from 
Tarnow, which had been arriving steadily 
more than a week. 

After dinner I paid a last visit to the 
trenches. The night was clear but moonless, 
so the Germans were sending up the beautiful 
rockets called "flares" to light up their 
enemies' trenches. 

As we approached the firing line we came 
upon all that was left of a village. Every wall 
was down, every chimney was down; it could 
almost be said that not a stone remained 
upon another. Only by the foundations out- 
lining some big building could I see where 
a rich manufacturer had been ruined. 



TRIPS FROM HEADQUARTERS 215 

Wherever cellars had been built these were 
being used as dwellings. We visited one 
vaulted structure 20 feet long by 15 feet 
wide used as a company office. It was very 
comfortably fitted up and in one corner were 
a stock of tins that the captain had laid in 
to supplement the regimental fare. Our host 
even had a bottle or so of wine, which might 
have been found in the village or may have 
come from his home. Nothing but a shell of 
the heaviest calibre could have penetrated 
to this retreat, a safety which was of more 
value to the company's books than the com- 
pany commander, because his position was 
on the firing line during a bombardment. 

As we left the village and walked along 
beside the communicating trenches, German 
machine guns started to rattle in our front. 

The machine gun is the most deadly in- 
strument of this war, and divides honors with 
the high explosive shell for moral effect. 
Rifle bullets are quite as deadly as machine- 
gun bullets and shrapnel probably scores 
more hits than lyddite, but when high ex- 



216 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

plosives or machine guns are being used one 
takes little notice of the shrapnel or the rifle 
fire. 

Officers in the Carpathians told me that 
the crack of the explosive bullets used by the 
Austrians is exceedingly disconcerting, es- 
pecially to the new troops, but I never ran 
across any of these in my experiences. 

This last visit was given a special interest, 
however, by the sight of a German soldier, — 
the only one, other than prisoners, that I saw 
in Poland, Galicia, France, or Belgium. 

Our regiment had a splendid searchlight, 
or projector, as they called it. It was 
mounted on a collapsible structure that could 
be put up or taken down and transported 
without difficulty. While I was standing 
looking through a loop-hole the light was 
turned on, and quite halfway between the 
opposing trenches I saw a German scout. 
He was less than 100 yards away and as 
clearly defined as a shooting-gallery bull's- 
eye. I shrank a little, as I do not like to see 
men killed, and this scene was as dramatic 



TRIPS FROM HEADQUARTERS 217 

as a play. As the seconds passed my nervous- 
ness increased ; I felt that some sure marks- 
man was drawing a steady bead. 

No shot was fired and the man was suf- 
fered to withdraw to the shelter of a rifle pit. 

I could not understand why the man was 
allowed to escape. If he had been picked 
up by the searchlight during a period of abso- 
lute calm, failure to shoot might have been 
explained on the ground of a desire not to 
start a fusilade, but at this time the enemy 
were firing not only with rifles but with 
machine guns. 

As we returned to the regimental head- 
quarters I mentioned the subject to one of 
the officers. His answer was "A quoi bon 
tuer le pauvre malheureux?" 

There is a strange psychology about the 
Russians that is hard to fathom. Their mili- 
tary tradition and their military success are 
founded upon an ability to undergo a greater 
butchery than their enemy, and yet they 
would not take a life as clearly forfeited as 
the one I had just seen. I do not believe 



218 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

any other nationality of men, under the same 
circumstances, would have allowed an enemy 
to escape. 

I left the trenches with a real regret and 
I parted from my new-found friends with 
sorrow. Only once more was I to hear guns 
sound and see shells break, and that was on 
the morrow in the fortress of Ossowetz. 



CHAPTER XII 

OSSOWETZ 

When Liege fell after ten days of attack; 
when Namur surrendered in two, when the 
French fortress of Maubeuge ended its re- 
sistance in two weeks, the western world 
said that modern siege howitzers had turned 
fortresses into curious antiques. When we 
heard stories of Russian forts holding out 
and throwing back the invaders we put them 
down as "Belgian victories." I remember 
writing something on the subject myself. 

The story of Peremysl, which I heard from 
General Sullivanoff, who captured it, was not 
encouraging to fort builders. 

After Hindenburg's first defeat before War- 
saw, the Austrian army retreated to the 
Carpathian Mountains, leaving a garrison of 
120,000 men in Peremysl. 

219 



220 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

As Russia lacked heavy guns, it could not 
attempt to storm the forts. Instead it threw 
an army of 70,000 men around the fort and 
advanced into the Carpathians. 

Peremysl had been fortified in the most 
modern manner. In addition, elaborate field 
works had been made before the siege. Such 
labyrinths of trenches as I saw there I had 
never believed existed. Before and between 
the forts the Austrians had put up veritable 
jungles of barbed wire. 

They must have expected vigorous attack, 
and they must have expected an early Austro- 
German advance from Cracow, because they 
left twice the normal garrison of the place 
and during the first weeks of siege made no 
attempt at economizing on food. 

When they finally realized that the Rus- 
sians were merely blockading them and that 
their relief was delayed, they made sorties, 
but, hemmed in by their own barbed wire 
and subject to shell and machine-gun fire 
from all sides, they were unable to advance. 
They became demoralized, and finally sur- 



OSSOWETZ 221 

rendered with three weeks of food still left. 
Even their destruction of forts and bridges 
was not complete. 

This failure increased the impression made 
upon me by Liege, Namur, Maubeuge, and 
Antwerp. 

When I was visiting the Guards Corps I 
asked General Bezobrazoff one day whether 
the experience of this war did not show that 
forts had become obsolete. The veteran 
replied that forts have certain moral disad- 
vantages. They tend to influence a nation 
to trust to stone and iron for the defence that 
can only come from a capable army, and 
they tempt generals to leave garrisons to be 
captured when they should take all their 
men with the field army. 

On the other hand, they are of inestimable 
value as a refuge for a defeated army to rally 
under, as a defense to communications, as a 
protection to the flank of an army, as a threat 
on the flank or rear of an advancing foe. 

He instanced how the armies retreating 
from East Prussia had taken refuge in Osso- 



222 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

wetz, Grodno, and Olita; how the English 
had rested under the guns of La Feree ; how 
his own corps had stopped Hindenburg at 
Ivangorod and gained time for the troops to 
arrive and defeat him at Warsaw ; how Paris 
had been a vital factor at the Marne; how 
the Germans had used Koenigsberg against 
Renenkampf. 

"But when the great artillery comes up, the 
fort becomes a liability, not an asset ? " I asked. 

"Certainly not, if both fort and men are 
good," he replied. "Go and see Ossowetz." 

So, with some misgivings as to the pro- 
priety of my request, I wired the great Head- 
quarters that I wished to visit Ossowetz. 
In three days came back the reply that the 
governor had been given orders to show me 
the fort, but I must be careful not to tell any 
military secrets. 

Thus it was that I arrived at the fortress 
of Ossowetz early one morning before bom- 
barding time and breakfasted in a casemate 
which a 42-centimeter shell had struck but 
not penetrated ; saw but could not tell the 




Commander of Fortress of Ossowetz, with Chief Engi- 
neer and Chief of Staff at Front Wall of Outer Fort 




Unexploded German Shells. The Largest is from the 
16-inch Siege Gun, the next Largest from the 11-inch 
Field Howitzer 

The largest shell used in the American army is 4.7, smaller than the 
smallest in the picture. 



OSSOWETZ 223 

extent of the dent it made, and then with the 
general commanding inspected the defences. 

Ossowetz is situated on the only ridge of 
dry ground that crosses a forty-mile-long 
marsh. From a near-by hill-top, General 
Skobeleff chose its location, and the hill bears 
the name of Skobeleff to this day. 

I give no information to the besiegers when 
I say that the forts are built among a group 
of hills and that forests, some natural, some 
planted, conceal the batteries and casemates 
even from hostile aircraft. 

Ossowetz was first built in 1888 and re- 
construction was commenced in 1910 with 
the experience of Port Arthur to go by. It 
was a part of the Russian scheme of army 
reorganization which was not complete when 
the war came — the fort itself was not com- 
plete when first attacked. 

Hostile fire was opened upon it on February 
9. The defenders occupied advance trenches 
under protection of the fortress guns, and 
most of these they hold to-day, the fourth 
month of the siege. 



224 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

After a few days' siege a spy entered the 
Russian lines, and, approaching the com- 
mander, offered him 500,000 rubles (more 
than $250,000) and a home in Germany to 
surrender the fort, saying that the guns which 
had reduced the forts of France and Belgium 
were now in position and would smash the 
fortress in thirty-six hours. 

The spy was shot. 

The bombardment which followed was the 
severest in history. Two hundred and fifty 
thousand shells of various sizes were fired 
into the fort, including those of 28 and 42 
centimeter calibre. 1 To this fire the concealed 
batteries constantly replied. 

During every respite the band paraded, 
and while the tired artillerymen rested, the 
infantry swarmed out and repaired the dam- 
age. First the defences were remade, then 
other evidence of the bombardment was 
obliterated. 

The general explained that the appearance 

1 The American army possesses only about fifty thousand shells 
of the smallest size and has no facilities for making more in war time. 
It is also almost without artillery. 



OSSOWETZ 225 

of a fort in siege greatly affected the morale 
of the troops. He ought to know, as he was 
on the outside of Plevna and the inside of 
Port Arthur. Of the trees blown down he 
made abatis. 

"It comes from Caesar's time, and is still 
the best," he said. "Besides, since the enemy 
cut it, courtesy requires its use." 

He was an ideal old warrior, with a roar of 
laughter like the explosion of a shell. If he 
had not been a teetotaler, I would compare 
him favorably with King Cole ! He was the 
very man to encourage troops in the thank- 
less task of defending a fort. 

I learned from him that the way to defend 
a fort was to fight from the utmost range of 
your guns, continually shelling the advancing 
trenches, countermining and counterattacking. 

Dispersion and concealment are the cardi- 
nal points of modern forts. When a garrison 
is driven behind its parapets the enemy's 
fire, being more concentrated, becomes more 
deadly. No longer can the defender depend 
upon the security of a wall. 



226 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

"The soldier must never get the idea that 
the fort is to keep him from contact with the 
enemy," the general said. "It is only to 
equalize the enemy's superiority in numbers." 

Indeed, in a modern siege the man in the 
front trench is not necessarily the worst off. 
He faces bullet and bayonet and hand bomb, 
but he is saved the concussion of the great 
shells. 

The Belgian forts were a little old, but the 
real trouble was that the army was too young. 
It would not stand a bayonet attack outside 
the fort. It would not stand the shell fire 
within. Belgium is now paying the price of 
being bellicose and unmilitary. If Liege and 
Namur had held like Ossowetz there would 
be a different history of the war in the west. 

At Ossowetz I have seen the ground dug 
up like a garden spaded by a giant spade 
and foot-thick trees sprawling like wheat 
cut by a drunken Titan. I have also reeled 
under the concussion of high explosive shell 
and can imagine the grandeur of Ossowetz 
under attack. 



OSSOWETZ 227 

The advance infantry is in comparative yy 
safety, as the shells zizz overhead, expecting 
a bayonet charge of greater numbers, yet 
confident in its own superior physique. The 
reserve infantry remains in the casemates, 
unhurt, but never sure that one of the giant 
shells will not find a weak spot in the roof 
and throw their riven bodies high above the 
tree tops. 

The artillery in its concealed batteries 
fires by compass and level at an enemy as 
well concealed as itself. Some artillerymen 
are out under fire, without the comfort of 
action, their guns trained on the ground 
across which the hostile infantry must ad- 
vance. The old general is riding from point 
to point in his automobile and bursting into 
his heartening laugh as the shells break 
near by. 

The smoke of bursting shells has risen 
above the forest. The surviving observers 
in the tree tops can no longer direct the fire 
of their own batteries. The time has come 
for the German assault. The smoke-colored 



228 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

battalions advance in the same formation 
Napoleon used at Borodino. 

Now the defending general's foresight is 
rewarded. His artillery, ranged long before 
to cover the open ground, needs no instruc- 
tions, but drives its shrapnel through the 
smoke pall. As the charging lines waver, 
the tired German gunners redouble their 
efforts and fairly pump high explosive into 
the wooded hills. But they do not know 
where their targets lie, and ninety-five out 
of a hundred shells are harmless. 

Confused and broken, the advantage of 
numbers gone, the Germans reach the ad- 
vance trench. 

As they approach, the Russian rifle fire dies 
away. The issue is decided by blade, and 
fists, and front teeth, as in the centuries past. 

Again and again has this performance been 
repeated. But still the front line keeps the 
enemy far from the fort; still the artillery 
breaks the momentum of the infantry attack 
on the outer trenches. 

Ossowetz is a much smaller fort than Liege, 



OSSOWETZ 229 

and Namur, and Maubeuge, and Antwerp, 
but it has stood much more punishment than 
all of these combined. 

When I commented on this, an old officer 
said, "You could not expect such untrained 
troops as the Belgians to stand high explosive 
shells, and you know there is no instance of 
untrained men stopping a bayonet attack 
in the open." 

I wonder if we should be able to hold the 
line of the Sierra Nevadas. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Upon Modern Fortifications 

I HOPE that nobody who has purchased this 
book will fail to read this chapter on forts. 

The information contained therein was ob- 
tained in Russian forts and from Russian 
officers, who have had the greatest experience in 
building and the greatest success in defending 
fortifications. 

This opportunity has never been given to any 
one else, and was given to me not as a personal 
matter, but as an evidence of friendship of the 
Russian government for the American people. 

I consider it particularly desirable that I 
should publish it because our government has 
forbidden American army officers to educate 
the American people in military affairs. 

The principles governing the construction 
of forts are as follows : — 

230 



MODERN FORTIFICATIONS 231 

The fort must be built across important 
lines of communication. It is desirable to 
build them at railroad centres, but against 
this is the disadvantage that most railroad 
junctions are the sites of large cities, which, 
for reasons of humanity, it is undesirable to 
render liable to siege. , 

The point along the main line of railroad 
communication should be chosen which is 
naturally defensible. The best defence is 
now, and it always has been, a stream run- 
ning through marshy banks. Mud is the 
greatest obstacle for troops to pass, and in 
winter time when the mud is frozen, running 
water is the strongest obstacle. It is not 
only hard to cross, but it is hard to mine 
under. 

The principles of Brialmont, namely, a 
number of separate forts, is still the correct 
plan, but the forts must be much larger than 
the ones he built, and the gun positions must 
not be exposed on turrets but concealed in 
trees. 

The central fort consists of about 600 acres. 



232 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

This is built in a group of hills, natural or 
artificial. It is surrounded by an embank- 
ment which, in the absence of natural features, 
is built about forty feet high. 

The slope of the ground is that at which 
earth will lie, namely, about a 45-degree angle, 
except at the extreme top where a concrete 
wall is built almost perpendicular for ten 
feet, and painted the color of grass. 

Such an embankment, when properly con- 
structed, is indistinguishable from the back- 
ground at a distance of 1000 yards. 

On the top of the embankment is an infan- 
try trench, with a covered top upon which 
grass is grown. This top is strong enough 
to stop bullets and shrapnel, and it is possible 
to build it strong enough to stop the shells of 
field guns. 

The structure is built without loop-holes, 
so that, when desirable, troops can stand 
shoulder to shoulder and fire without hin- 
drance, but steel shields are provided so that 
the opening may be closed, leaving apertures 
just large enough to look and snipe through. 



rM s 


i y " 


^2m 










MODERN FORTIFICATIONS 233 

Brackets are provided at frequent inter- 
vals, so that machine guns may be placed at 
will. 

The firing trench is interrupted, at inter- 
vals of a battalion deployed, by emplacements 
constructed for field artillery. 

Immediately back of the embankment and 
10 feet below the level of the outside is an 
asphalt roadway 60 to 80 feet wide, down 
the middle of which runs a railroad track. 
In this manner everything from troops to 
heavy guns can be brought to any desired 
spot with the least delay, and troops in par- 
ticular can be manoeuvred as on a parade 
ground. 

The entire ground covered by the fort is 
planted with trees, preferably of the pine 
variety, as these do not lose their leaves in 
winter. 

Concealed among these trees are a great 
number of gun positions for guns of various 
kinds and calibres, from six inches in diameter 
up to the largest which modern artillery 
science affords. 



234 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The fort must have many guns, but four or 
five times as many emplacements. The em- 
placements consist of a concrete platform, 
probably only five in an arc of 20 degrees, 
but is surrounded, except at the point of 
egress, by an embankment ten to fifteen feet 
higher than the floor. Naturally howitzer 
emplacements may be sunk deeper than the 
emplacements of guns. 

Each gun has a shrapnel -proof shelter, 
and beside each gun and as close as possible 
is a covered roof capable of stopping every- 
thing but heavy shells. 

These gun emplacements are made as small 
as artillery experts deem possible, so as to 
limit the space in which a shell can fall. 

The guns used in these emplacements are 
not mobile in the sense of field artillery, but 
are on small wheels and can be moved along 
the perfect roads of the fortress. Thus when 
the enemy locates a battery of this kind, it is 
moved by motor transport to another con- 
cealed position. 

In time of siege the infantry live in redoubts 




A — Central fort — all wooded hills — about 600 acres. 

B — Ring forts varying in shape according to ground (wooded) about 100 acres each. 

C Trenches dug at strategic points outside of main works. There are lots of trenches inside the works to cover captured places. 

D — Sunken roads connecting outer forts with main central fort. Protected by wire entanglements and dirt bank. 



CONCEALED TURRET5 





5WAHP 



BARBED VJIR.E 



OBSERVATION TOWER 

CONCEALED TURRET 



GLACIS - 
BARBED WIRE. 



'W.ii..^\L_ 



MACHINE GUN5 



INVISIBLE FACE 





SWAMP 



MODERN FORTIFICATIONS 235 

made of reenforced monolithic concrete. These 
redoubts are made either by burrowing into 
an existing hill, or in the absence of such a 
hill, the concrete building is covered over with 
earth, then grass and shrubs and trees are 
planted on the sides and tops so as to render 
it indistinguishable to enemy telescopes and 
enemy aeroplanes. Only on its inner face 
and concealed in the trees are the casemates 
perpendicular, with windows for natural venti- 
lation. During the bombardment these win- 
dows are closed with steel doors, much like 
those used on office vaults, only heavier, 
which keep out shell splinters and the concus- 
sion of exploding shells. 

It appears that the casemates of the Bel- 
gians were not heavy enough to stop the shells 
of the German great howitzers. They were 
built when the six-inch howitzers were the 
heaviest known. 

In the same way the casemates of a better 
fort — Port Arthur — were penetrated by the 
Japanese eleven-inch guns. 

The modern Russian forts were built with 



236 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

the lesson of Port Arthur as a model, and I 
have seen dents where the big German shells 
struck and failed to penetrate. 

When tales of the effect of German bom- 
bardment on Belgian forts first reached 
America, it was popularly supposed that 
nothing could be built strong enough to 
withstand them. Sheer nonsense ! The pen- 
etrative power of any gun and any projectile 
has its specific limit, and it is no difficult 
matter to build a defence sufficiently strong 
to withstand it. 

Personally I believe that a six-inch steel 
plate on top of the brick of Brialmont's 
forts would have kept out the shells. 

When the fort is under bombardment and 
the windows of the casemates are closed, the 
air is supplied by a ventilating system. 

With the use of asphyxiating gases it 
becomes apparent that the ventilating system 
might become more of a danger than a safety. 
Defence must be found in the storage of 
compressed air or in oxygen tanks to be used 
until the asphyxiating gases have blown away, 
■ — a simple matter. 



MODERN FORTIFICATIONS 237 

When the worst arrives, the bombardment 
of the forts will be so general and cover the 
ground so thoroughly that it will be no longer 
practicable to use the batteries before alluded 
to, in open emplacement and which depend 
upon concealment for their security. 

Fire then will be opened from the turret 
guns, which have not yet spoken, and which 
are not used except in this emergency, because 
when spotted by the enemy they cannot be 
moved, and in time must fall victim to a suffi- 
cient number of hits. 

The modern turret guns are not mounted 
in the open as Brialmont's. They are con- 
cealed as carefully as ingenuity will permit. 
The dome of the turret, which should be 
shaped like an overturned dinghy, rises only 
the diameter of the gun above the imitation 
hill in which it is sunk. 

The hill is planted with bushes and trees 
and grass. The turret and such parts of 
the muzzle as protrude are painted the exact 
color of the verdure at all seasons of the year, 
and in addition are strewn with fresh-cut 
twigs and bushes. 



238 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The turret top is strong enough to stop at 
least one shell of the largest calibre known at 
the time the turret is built. 

This turret is hermetically sealed. The 
men at the gun do nothing but load. The 
elevation of the gun and the direction are 
controlled electrically by an officer in an 
observation station. 

When the gun is firing the turret becomes 
frightfully hot and a constant current of air 
must be pumped into the loading chamber 
to keep the gun crew alive. 

Observation stations are many. 

The actual station controlling the gun is 
either in a steel chamber located towards the 
top of a near-by mound, with revolving open- 
ings for the use of the sighting officer, and 
little peepholes to look through. Even these 
peepholes must give place to the use of a 
periscope as in battleships. 

At one of the forts I visited, a shell of the 
largest calibre had struck upon one of these 
steel observation chambers. It had failed 
to penetrate, but the heat generated was so 



MODERN FORTIFICATIONS 239 

great and so instantaneous that the head of 
the observer was burnt to a cinder. 

The actual directing of the gun may be 
done as on battle ships in a deep chamber 
far from danger of shell penetration, and in- 
structions for the laying may come by tele- 
phone from other observers. These observers 
may be in tree tops. They may be in the 
most advanced trenches. Before the fort 
is entirely surrounded they may be in farm- 
houses or hayricks miles away. They may 
be in aeroplanes communicating by wireless. 
In fact, it is a rare thing that the man who lays 
the gun ever sees the point he is shooting at. 

The fort is built to take advantage of such 
natural defences as may be found, — ravines, 
streams, precipices, etc., — but in addition to 
these certain normal defences must never be 
omitted. 

Immediately outside of the embankment 
must be a moat. It must be so wide that 
no beams which men can carry can reach 
across, and be made as deep as possible. 

On the bank on the outside of the moat, 



240 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

concealed from the enemy, is a most complete 
assortment of barbed wire and other forms of 
abatis. 

On the inner side for a short distance above 
the water's edge are planted steel spikes like 
those used in bear pits. 

At the corner of the moat, on the enemy- 
side, machine guns are placed to fire on 
the enemy when an attempt is made to cross 
the moat by pontoon bridge or any other 
means. 

These machine guns are protected by heavy 
concrete roofs which are intended to keep out 
hostile shell fire and also to stop sapping 
operations. They are connected with the 
inner fort by a passage running under the 
moat which is always so constructed that 
when the machine-gun emplacements must 
be abandoned, it will be flooded by water from 
the moat so as not to furnish a doorway to 
the fort. 

Behind the roadway just inside of the 
embankment surrounding the fort is a second 
moat, identical with the first, and inside of 



MODERN FORTIFICATIONS 241 

that another embankment commanding the 
former and in every respect similar. 

Where the country is rising, line may be 
built behind line as far as the skill of engineers 
and the parsimony of appropriation will permit. 

Around the central fort are a series of 
lesser forts. From the central fort to each 
of these sub-forts runs a roadway 40 to 80 
feet wide, sunk 10 feet below the natural 
surface of the ground. The excavation is 
used to build an embankment on each side, 
like the embankment of the fort itself. Much 
care is taken to make the road as safe as 
possible from enemy artillery fire. 

The embankment also must be laid in such 
fashion as to enfilade the ground between 
each of the roads running from the central 
fort to the ring forts by rifle, machine-gun 
and field-gun fire. 

The outer ring of forts must be placed with 
regard to the natural condition of the ground, 
and if possible should be within 2000 yards 
of each other. In other words, they leave no 
spot safe from machine-gun fire. 



242 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

These forts are built like the central fort 
with moat, embankment, turrets, hidden gun 
emplacements, casemates, and should never 
have less than two lines of defence, because 
if the first is taken by sudden assault, the 
garrison of each fort should hold the inner 
defence while reinforcements are hurried along 
the protected roads. 

It is inevitable that between the forts there 
must be dead ground, also there will be points 
particularly adapted to defence. To cover 
the first and take advantage of the second, 
special field works will be constructed and 
connected with the forts and the roadways by 
trenches which the engineer will try to build 
in such a fashion that men in either are pro- 
tected from enemy fire but are open to fire 
from fortress positions. 

If not relieved, forts usually fall eventually 
to infantry attack. Except in case of cow- 
ardice, treachery, or lack of training of the 
garrison. They never fall to bombardment. 
Thus everything must be done to hold back 
the hostile infantry. 



MODERN FORTIFICATIONS 243 

Barbed wire, used first, I believe, by the 
Spanish army in Cuba, is the commonest 
form of infantry obstruction, although the 
army's use of stakes and holes and of trees 
laid top end toward the enemy, are still much 
in vogue. Pointed steel fences have certain 
advantages and disadvantages. All forms of 
entanglement are used. 

In the first place a general wall of wire is 
put around the entire circumference of all the 
forts. Then each fort has its own wire fence. 
There is a wire fence on the outside of each 
moat, and there is wire on the enemy side of 
the embankments. Every little field work 
has its special protection. In addition to 
this, running through the territory between 
the forts and the roads connecting the 
forts with the centre, are carefully plaited 
wire defences so laid as to confuse the attack 
of the enemy and to herd him into corners 
where he will be mowed down by machine 
guns, and with carefully placed openings 
through which the advancing infantry can 
manoeuvre. 



244 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Such in brief is the construction of the 
modern fort. But the main defence of the 
fort must be made from 1000 to 2000 yards 
beyond the front wall of the attack side. 
Here in natural field works the infantry must 
stay as long as possible. As long as the 
infantry can stay here, it is not likely that 
the hostile artillery observers will locate 
many of the defensive batteries. 

Anybody who wishes to test this may take 
his field glasses and go into the country and 
endeavor to see what he can make out of a 
wooded hill a mile away. 

While the defensive artillery is concealed 
from view, it in turn can bombard the hos- 
tile infantry, with perfect knowledge of the 
range and with great effect. It can also 
search the likely gun positions, and will 
score a great number of hits, particularly on 
the enemy heavy guns. 

At Ossowetz, for instance, the Russians 
struck and destroyed a German 42 centimetre 
which they had never seen, but which was 
located in a likely spot known to the defence. 



MODERN FORTIFICATIONS 245 

However, in war, numbers must eventually 
tell. The infantry will finally be driven into 
the front fort. Enemy observers will plot 
on maps the location of batteries in this fort : 
they will also plot its exact dimensions. In 
due time tremendous fire will be opened on 
it, — a certain proportion of shells being 
aimed at the known artillery positions and 
others sent to search every nook and corner. 
This fort will be able to make but little reply. 
Its parapet will be knocked to pieces; its 
wire entanglements blown to bits. The other 
forts will reply, and in particular will sweep 
the faces of its embankments with shrapnel 
fire. The enemy troops will leap to the 
assault, and its artillery will play upon the 
road leading from the central fort to the one 
attacked. Reinforcements will be rushed into 
the defended fort. It will be taken and re- 
taken several times, but eventually will fall 
into the hands of the attackers. 

With one fort taken, the second is attacked 
with greater advantage and the process will 
be continued. 



246 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

History shows that eventually most forts 
surrender. There is a limit to the endurance 
of most men and it is not often that the mil- 
lionth man remains in command of a fort 
until it has been stormed to the last defence. 

However, the principle should be established 
in every soldier that a garrison once isolated 
and unable to retreat to strengthen its own 
army in the field, should never abandon the 
valuable strategic point intrusted to its care, 
while a single gun remains serviceable or a 
single point untaken. 

I take it as a matter generally admitted 
that in the event of war, if any military 
power should obtain command of the sea, 
it would be impossible to attempt to hold 
our seacoast States. Our whole object would 
be to keep the hostile army from the centre 
of the nation during the years that it would 
take us to organize a sufficient force to retake 
the lost provinces and buy arms and ammu- 
nition abroad. 

It is a military possibility that the use of 
our regular army, our militia, and the organi- 



MODERN FORTIFICATIONS 247 

zation of naturalized Americans who received 
military training before they left their home 
country, and such troops as could be made 
available in a hurry, could stop the enemy on 
the natural barriers which have been fought 
over since the white man came to America. 

For instance, there should be built, and 
always kept up to the latest developments, 
forts at Albany, Buffalo, Pittsburg, Atlanta, 
Vicksburg, Houston, and the passes of the 
Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains. 

With such points in our hands, it would 
be possible to manoeuvre our less mobile and 
less effective troops against an invading 
enemy. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Leaving Russia 

From the fortress of Ossowetz I went by 
motorcar to Bielostock and spent the night 
in an excellent little hotel, having missed the 
express train for Petrograd. 

The next day I took an accommodation 
train to Petrograd, in company with Colonel 
Wischniakoff, who will be known to American 
army officers as the commander of the Rus- 
sian sharpshooters at the Olympian Games 
held in Stockholm in 1912. It was largely 
upon his advice that I visited Moscow, where 
I called upon the General Governor, Major- 
General Prince Youssoupoff, who was kind 
enough to invite me to lunch to meet the 
officers of a Kazak regiment that was sta- 
tioned at Moscow to guard the ammunition 
factories. 

248 



LEAVING RUSSIA 249 

Princess Youssoupoff told me the following 
story : — 

She and her husband and son and daughter- 
in-law were taking the cure at Karlsbad in 
company with General Broussiloff, when the 
diplomatic situation became strained. Gen- 
eral Broussiloff, who was alone, immediately 
took the train across the frontier, but the 
declaration of war caught the Youssoupoff 
family in Berlin. The same day Berlin 
police arrested and took to the police station 
all the menservants with them, and young 
Youssoupoff was put under arrest and told 
not to leave his room. His wife, a Grand 
Duchess of Russia, immediately telephoned 
to her cousin, the Crown Princess of Prussia, 
who was greatly pained at what had taken 
place, and said she would come immediately 
in her own carriage, to apologize and to 
free them from any further restraint. 

Half an hour later the telephone bell rang ; 
it was the Crown Princess, more agitated 
than before. She had been to her father- 
in-law, the Emperor, and he, so far from 



250 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

indorsing his daughter-in-law's action, had 
instructed her to notify Prince Youssoupoff 
and his entire suite, women as well as men, 
that they were under arrest. This was before 
the Russian Ambassador left Berlin. 

The Youssoupoff family escaped to Den- 
mark by a ruse de guerre, and the Emperor, 
learning of their departure from Berlin, sent 
special instructions to the frontier for their 
arrest, which, however, arrived too late. 

During the luncheon I was startled to see 
a Kazak captain crying freely. He had been 
explaining that his company had been kept 
in Moscow guarding the ammunition fac- 
tories during the whole course of the war, and 
that, up to the present, there was no promise 
of his being allowed to proceed to the front. 
The recital had been too much for his feelings. 

In Russia no stigma attaches to the fullest 
expression of any proper and lofty emotion. 
It is evidently proper to cry because one is 
not allowed to die for one's country, but it 
would never do to betoken irritation at hav- 
ing been thrown from a carriage by an auto- 



LEAVING RUSSIA 251 

mobile where such irritation would indicate 
fear. 

After a short stay in Moscow I returned for 
the last time to the great Headquarters to say 
good-by. 

The Grand Duke was kind enough to 
invite me to return again at any time. Leav- 
ing the Commander-in-Chief, I made my 
farewells to General Yanouskevitch, told him 
of the Grand Duke's invitation and asked, 
partly in jest, if it would be convenient for 
me to return the same time next year, to 
which he replied in all seriousness, "Certainly, 
or, if you prefer it, the year after." 

People who are unwilling to accept my 
opinion that we are only at the beginning of 
a long war may give greater credit to this 
authority. 

From Petrograd I travelled to Stockholm 
and Christiania, and saw how the war was 
affecting these two countries. I also visited 
the great Arctic explorer Amundsen. 

From Norway I went to London, when 
Lord Kitchener, learning of my trip through 



252 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Russia, asked me to call on him. I went and 
told him what is in this book and but little 
besides. 

From London I went to Paris and from 
Paris to the Headquarters of General Joffre, 
and from there I returned direct to America. 

Envoi 

And here I am home again at my desk, 
where the first thing I see each morning is 
yesterday's balance sheet, same as it used 
to be before, and I have written a book, not 
phrasing it as a wise man should with a single 
eye to sales, but with no higher aim than to 
serve my country, and as I look over the 
daily balance sheets I know that this is stupid 
and will not pay. 

But I have tasted of the wine of death, 
and its flavor will be forever in my throat. 
The great debauch, which periodically affects 
mankind, will come to us again, as it has 
come before, and when it comes I know that 
a million men must fall, while we are striv- 
ing to learn in the stress of war, with the best 



LEAVING RUSSIA 253 

men gone, the lesson that so easily could have 
been taught in peace. 

If my book serves to minimize the crime of 
unpreparedness, what matter a few kopecks 
more or less ? 



APPENDIX A 

History of the Acts Leading up to the 
Great War 

The early history of this controversy was ob- 
tained, for the most part, from standard works; 
the recent developments from active participants. 

The cause of this war is found in the move- 
ments of the different races of Europe toward 
the formation of governments coextensive 
with their separate identities. This move- 
ment impinging against the existing order of 
things is in this century what the movement 
of liberalism against the existing order of 
things was in the last century, what the 
hatred of monarch against monarch was in 
the eighteenth century, what the movement 
for religious change was in the century before, 
and the movement against feudalism was 
the century before that — each one the great 
motive force of its age. 

255 



256 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Each of these conflicts involved in sub- 
stantial degree all the nations of Europe, each 
ended in certain changes in boundaries, of 
religious and political predominance and of 
the reestablishment of peace by the regroup- 
ment of powers in such fashion as to prevent 
any one monarch, religion, or political school 
from dominating the whole. This group- 
ment was called the Balance of Power. Such 
a balance was established in 1815 upon the 
ashes of the conflict lit by the French Revo- 
lution. 

Surviving the last assault of liberalism in 
arms in 1848, overcoming Russian attack 
on Turkey in 1854, and the Italian wars for 
independence, it was thrown off its balance 
by the formation of Bismarck's Empire in 
1870. It had inertia enough to deprive 
Russia of the fruits of her victory over the 
Turks in 1877, and to remand several mil- 
lions of Christian population to Turkish 
misrule and to sow the seeds of the present 
struggle by turning over the Orthodox Slavs 
of Bosnia and Herzegovina "to be adminis- 



APPENDIX A 257 

tered by Catholic Austria in the interest of 
the peace of Europe." 

Let us take up a history of this event. 

The Christian peoples of the Balkans, in- 
cluding Greece, were never entirely subjugated 
by the Turks. They were always agitating 
for war and breaking into rebellions. 

As a matter of fact, the Turkish rule 
of aliens was on the whole less oppressive 
than the alien rule of the races of Western 
Europe, but it was oppressive none the less, 
and when resented took the same measures to 
enforce its dominance that other conquerors 
have taken, and are taking to-day. In other 
words, it massacred the subject populations. 

These massacres were resented mildly by 
all the peoples of Christian religion, but they 
were resented fiercely by the peoples related 
in blood as well as in sect with the massacred; 
namely, the Orthodox Russians. 

Russia tried hard to persuade the other 
Christian nations of Europe to join her in 
freeing the Christians of the Balkans from 
the Turks and to put an end to the Bulgarian 



258 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

atrocities. Failing to obtain any coopera- 
tion, the Czar notified them that he would 
act alone, and accordingly fought the Turkish 
war of 1877. This bloody and hard -fought 
contest ended in complete victory for the 
Russians, who marched to the very gates of 
Constantinople and there dictated a peace 
providing for the complete independence of 
Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania, and made 
certain cessions of territory to the two former 
states. The main feature of the treaty con- 
cerned Bulgaria, which was made a self- 
governing state, tributary to the Sultan, 
including nearly all of European Turkey, 
between Roumania and Servia to the north, 
and Greece to the south. Only a strip of the 
peninsula, from Constantinople west to the 
Adriatic, was to be left to Turkey. 

This peace, which freed the Christian 
population from the Turks after four cen- 
turies of oppression, frightened the other 
Great Powers, namely, Great Britain, Ger- 
many, and Austria, who feared that Russia 
would gain thereby at their expense. 



APPENDIX A 259 

Accordingly, a Congress of the Powers was 
called to meet at Berlin under the presidency 
of Bismarck. 

Partly through the strength of the German 
army, partly through his own overbearing 
personality, partly by his superior mental 
ability, Bismarck entirely dominated the Con- 
gress, which decided that Russia should 
receive from Roumania the province of Bes- 
sarabia, Roumania should receive compensa- 
tion from Turkey to the south, that the 
principality of Bulgaria should be made 
autonomous, but under the sovereignty of 
the Sultan ; Roumania, Servia, and Montene- 
gro to be entirely free. Thessaly and Epirus 
were afterwards ceded by Turkey to Greece 
under pressure. The provinces of Bosnia 
and Herzegovina, which Russia had also 
freed from Turkey, were given to Austria, as 
before mentioned. 

This was Bismarck's great leap into the 
future and the parent of the present war. 

Austria had been hostile to France since 
1859, and Prussia had humiliated her in 1866 



260 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

and had compelled her to cede territory to 
Italy. By giving Austria a partial foothold 
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bismarck com- 
pensated Austria for the Italian provinces, 
which he had taken from her in 1866, and 
made her a permanent enemy of Russia, and 
thus entirely dependent upon himself, as 
Austria alone could never hope to retain 
Bosnia and Herzegovina from Russia. 

Of the various Balkan peoples, the Rou- 
manians consider themselves Italians, and 
are chiefly Catholic. Bulgarians and Ser- 
vians are Slav and chiefly Orthodox. Greeks 
are Greeks, and Orthodox. 

All these countries, excepting Servia, which 
had not one but two royal families, selected 
princes with more or less "assistance." Rou- 
mania chose a Catholic Hohenzollern of the 
same family as the Emperor of Germany. 
Bulgaria selected a German Catholic of the 
family of Saxe-Coburg, who, as part of the 
arrangement, agreed to have his son brought 
up in the Orthodox church, for which he was 
excommunicated by the Pope. 1 The Greeks 

1 The ban has been withdrawn since the outbreak of war. 



APPENDIX A 261 

selected a German prince, but afterwards 
expelled him and took a Protestant Dane, 
whose son — the present king — was married 
to a sister of the Kaiser. 

Thus came into existence four independent 
little states with national ambitions and with 
ruling houses of alien race, dependent more 
or less upon their relatives who ruled in the 
big nations of Europe. 

Of all these countries Servia, who in ancient 
times was by far the most powerful of them, 
was the only one that did not have direct 
access to the sea. 

Her only products, pigs and sheep, had 
no market in Greece, Bulgaria, or Roumania, 
which countries raised a quantity of these for 
themselves. There was a market in Austria 
and also oversea, but Austria, controlling 
the railroad to the sea, imposed prohibitive 
freight rates in order to buy from Servia at 
her own price. 

She looked upon the Servians as a savage 
and inferior people. She exploited the Ser- 
vians in Servia and oppressed the Servian 



262 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Slavs in Austria-Hungary, as she had done 
in times past to the Italians. 

After the treaty of Berlin in 1878, the Great 
Powers ceased to interest themselves actively 
in Balkan affairs, "the Near East problem," 
as English statesmen called it. 

Russia embarked upon her Asiatic adven- 
tures, Germany devoted herself to industry, 
Great Britain took up a series of internal 
reforms. Austria busied herself relieving 
many of her internal strains, in an effort to 
recreate the strong Empire which was 
stretched to its utmost by Solferino and 
Sadowa. France stormed and threatened, 
gesticulated and ejaculated, appeared to be 
on the verge of anarchy, but nevertheless made 
enormous strides in industry and military re- 
organization. She introduced universal mili- 
tary service, which among other effects has 
enormously increased the physical strength 
of the people. She never forgot Sedan, and 
the loss of Alsace-Lorraine rankled night and 
day. 

Surprised and alarmed at France's recovery 



APPENDIX A 

from the catastrophe of 1870, Germany seri- 
ously considered, in 1875, making war to 
destroy her. Germany was deterred by 
world public opinion. 

The fact that her failure to use her power 
without mercy at that time gave her enemy 
the opportunity to recuperate and thwart 
her ever afterward, accounts for the pre- 
dominance to-day of the school that puts all 
considerations of humanity and existing laws 
of war and peace beneath the national welfare. 

The year 1883 recorded another of Bis- 
marck's diplomatic triumphs. Crispi — a low- 
class politician — came into power in Italy and 
was persuaded by Bismarck to bring Italy 
into a triple alliance with Germany and her 
old oppressor, Austria. 

In 1897 a Greek attack on Turkey was 
badly beaten and only England's interven- 
tion saved Greece from destruction. 

The years of peace following 1878 built up 
the resources and animosities of this war. 

Immediately after the foundation of the 
German Empire the freedom of intercourse 



264 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

between its component parts, and wise social 
legislation, caused unprecedented prosperity. 
Emigration ceased. Soon a momentum of 
business demanded foreign markets, and 
Germany began to push out for world's trade 
at a time when English business men and 
English workmen were slacking up. 

England controlled so much overseas terri- 
tory, so many of the naval strategic and 
commercial centres, and so much of the seas' 
commerce as well as military control of the 
sea, that she neither felt nor feared any 
competitor. 

On the other hand, Germany — newly con- 
stituted a nation, as a military power the 
strongest in the world — found herself bat- 
tling for world's trade against heavy odds, 
became conscious of the uneven distribution 
of the earth's wealth, and determined to get 
her share of this as a nation, just as the un- 
favored elements of some nations, aware of 
the uneven distribution of the wealth in the 
nation, have become determined as a class 
to get their share. 



APPENDIX A 2Q5 

She turned hungry eyes upon South America, 
Africa, and Asia, the continents which other 
European nations had taken as easy prey for 
their need to expand. 

Africa could be reached to the south only 
by using France as a vassal state. Asia 
could be reached through the ally Austria, 
the Balkan States and Turkey, only at the 
expense of Russia. China could be reached 
by sea. Japan was opposed to Germany's 
expansion in that direction. South America 
could be reached by sea. The Monroe Doc- 
trine interfered. Germany wanted what she 
considered her share of all these, and she 
wanted it in the Prussian imperial way. 

Why was she to be bound by treaties and 
rights established before her birth and with- 
out her sanction? 

Her mistake was that she moved in all 
these directions and excited all the nations 
who had contrary interests or principles. 

Germany embarked on superman mili- 
tary preparations, including strategic rail- 
roads to concentrate against France, Russia, 



266 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

and Belgium. Germany also engaged in the 
building of a navy that might challenge Eng- 
land on the sea. 

Her situation was aggravated when the 
Spanish-American war, to the surprise of 
everybody, including America, plumped the 
Philippine Islands, territory which Germany 
might easily have purchased from Spain, into 
the lap of the United States. 

All nations had been willing for a cen- 
tury to trade abroad under sufferance of Eng- 
land and to arm only against each other. 
This imperial Germany was not content to 
do. Supreme on land, she wished to be su- 
preme as well at sea. "I am admiral of the 
Atlantic," wrote the Kaiser to the Czar. 

Now, England depends upon her supremacy 
at sea not only for her riches, for her empire, 
but for her very existence. Let another rule 
the waves, and Britannia may starve. 

Not long after the excitement caused by 
Admiral Diederich in Manila Bay, German 
marines were landed in Venezuela, at that 
time the most turbulent and viciously mis- 



APPENDIX A 267 

governed state in South America. The 
marines were withdrawn only after a most 
vigorous representation by the American 
government, which then had — or thought it 
had — a fleet equal to Germany's, and what 
was more effective, the whole-hearted sym- 
pathy of Great Britain. 

At about the same time, German diplo- 
macy took advantage of the assassination of 
the German ambassador at Pekin to follow 
the example of other European nations and 
take forcible possession of a portion of the 
Chinese Empire, adding to the offence given 
to the Japanese by her participation with 
Russia and France in the note demanding 
Japan give up Korea and the Liao-tung 
Peninsula occupied in the Japanese-Chinese 
war of 1894. 

Shortly after the Russian-Japanese war 
and the attempted revolution in Russia, 
occurred the revolution in Turkey, whereby 
the Young Turks, for the most part educated 
in Germany, overthrew the Sultan — and 
assumed charge of the government. 



268 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

Advantage was taken of this discord by 
Ferdinand of Bulgaria to declare himself the 
king of the Turkish Empire, and by Austria 
to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina. Austria 
was seconded in this by the full force of the 
German Empire. 

Russia was at that time powerless to object, 
and England and France could do nothing 
more than protest and refuse to sanction it. 

The next diplomatic strain came between 
Germany and France, this time over the 
Agadir incident in Morocco. Now Great 
Britain came vigorously to the assistance of 
her new ally, and Germany yielded. 

During all the years between 1878 and 
1908 the various Balkan States were as 
jealous of each other as they were hostile to 
the Turks ; they could never combine against 
a common foe. 

The Austrian aggression into Bosnia and 
Herzegovina had bitterly offended Servia, the 
Balkan state with the least to fear from 
Turkey and likewise the least to gain from 
Turkey by war. 



APPENDIX A 269 

There came into power in the Balkan 
States at this time three very exceptional men, 
— Mr. Pasitch, Prime Minister of Servia ; Mr. 
Gueschoff, President of the Council of Minis- 
ters of Bulgaria; and Mr. Venezalos, the 
predominant figure, Minister of Foreign Affairs 
and Premier of Greece. 

These men agreed jointly to make war 
upon Turkey. In the event of victory the 
principal spoils were to be — for Servia 
a seaport through Albania, the port of 
Durazzo upon the Adriatic Sea; for Greece, 
the Turkish islands in the Mediterranean; 
for Bulgaria, the larger part of Macedonia 
up to the walls of Constantinople. 

It was agreed between the Balkan States 
that in the event of disagreement upon the 
exact division of the Turkish spoil, the Czar 
of Russia would act as arbitrator between 
them. 

The European powers, excepting Russia, 
were opposed to the revolt against the 
Mohammedans. However, they could not 
agree among themselves how to make Tur- 



270 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

key reform or how to keep the Christian 
nations from war. 

When it came to making peace, Austria 
positively refused that Servia should have a 
port on the Adriatic Sea. 

From what we now know of the relative 
fighting efficiency of the Balkan and Austrian 
troops it appears that the Balkan alliance 
could have held the territory against Austria. 

But this idea does not seem to have occurred 
to it. 

Servia yielded her heart's desire, not without 
protest, but without effort to hold it. Instead 
she demanded as a recompense that part of 
Bulgaria's share of the spoils which her troops 
occupied. 

The Turkish war had given Bulgaria enor- 
mous prestige as well as a substantial increase 
in territory. There was talk the world over of 
Bulgaria forming an empire of the Balkans 
with the king of Bulgaria as Emperor just as 
forty years before the Empire had been 
formed under the king of Prussia. Bulgaria 
was in a dominating position and the other 



APPENDIX A 271 

Balkan States were jealous. Roumania, which 
had not undergone the hazards and hard- 
ships of war, demanded not even Turkish 
territory but Bulgarian in order to preserve 
the Balkan balance of power ! 

As the situation became more and more 
strained, the Czar of Russia telegraphed to 
the contending sovereigns, offering to act as 
mediator between them. The king of Servia 
promptly cabled a complete acceptance, while 
King Ferdinand of Bulgaria returned an 
evasive answer. 

Gueschoff, a much travelled and highly 
educated man, saw that Bulgaria was over- 
matched, and urged that Russia, the liberator 
and life-long friend of all the Balkan States, 
arbitrate between them. 

His advice was contrary to the spirit of the 
hour, so after vainly counselling prudence he 
was forced to resign. 

His successor in office, Dr. Daneff, when 
sobered by the responsibility of government, 
reached the same conclusion and was prepar- 
ing to start for St. Petersburg when the war 
party began hostilities. 



272 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The Bulgarian army had overwhelmed the 
Servians in 1885, it had just decisively 
beaten the Turks, who had easily defeated 
the Greeks in 1897. It was confident of its 
superiority over the combined Servian and 
Greek armies. 

A plan was in existence to take Belgrade 
within five days of the outbreak of war and 
to surprise Salonika. As no railroad ran 
from Salonika south, the taking of Athens 
would be a slower matter. 

In order to force war General Vasoff, with- 
out the knowledge of the government, caused 
troops to attack both Servians and Greeks. 

The Daneff government, which had brought 
about the resignation of Gueschoff because of 
his unwillingness to fight the other Balkan 
States, refused to back up the general. 

It ordered the army to cease operations 
and called upon Russia to interfere. 

While the Bulgarian army was paralyzed 
the Greeks and Servians took the offensive. 
The Turks seized arms again, and Roumania 
mobilized. 



APPENDIX A 273 

Prince Constantine of Greece, who had been 
accused of cowardice in the Turkish war of 
1897, and who had subsequently studied in 
Germany, developed real military ability. 
Finding himself in superior numbers at Kil- 
kish, he harangued his troops, turned the 
Bulgarian right flank, and as the enemy began 
to withdraw attacked the centre with the 
bayonet. His victory was overwhelming and 
he evinced great power in following it up, 
never giving the Bulgarians time to reor- 
ganize. Servia entered from the west, Rou- 
mania from the north, and Turkey retook 
Adrianople. 

Bulgaria was prostrate. 

At the suggestion of Sir Edward Grey, 
British foreign minister, a Peace Confer- 
ence was held in London and a truce patched 
up, which satisfied no one but Austria. 

The hostility of the Servians towards the 
Austrians, which was started in 1878, when 
Austria occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
became violent when she annexed these 
provinces in 1908, and boundless when she 



274 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

blocked the road to the Adriatic which Servia 
had cut for herself through Albania. 

The Servian attitude towards Austria, both 
official and unofficial, became exactly what 
that of Piedmont had been before the libera- 
tion of Italy. There were nationalistic soci- 
eties, some of them public and some of them 
secret, winked at by the government. 

The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the 
embodiment of the Austrian aggression and 
the chief object of hatred of the Slavs. Op- 
portunity was taken of his visit to Sarajevo 
in May, 1914, to assassinate him. 

What steps followed in Austria and Ger- 
many have not been made known and prob- 
ably never will be made known. 

To what extent monarchial horror of the 
assassination of an hereditary ruler governed, 
and to what extent the feeling that vigorous 
steps must be taken to prevent Servia from 
dismembering Austria, as Piedmont leniently 
treated in the past had done, controlled ; to 
what extent the crime was looked upon as 
an opportunity for a Germanic advance in 



APPENDIX A 275 

the East in the manner that Bismarck had 
found excuses for war, will probably remain 
disputed points. 

His death was brought about by a Servian 
cause. Its time and manner were most oppor- 
tune for the German advance. 

In the first place, it was unquestionably 
an overt, aggressive act on the part of the 
pan-Servians. 

In the second place, it was an assault on 
monarchy. 

In the third place, it came before France 
and Russia had completed their contemplated 
army reorganizations. 

In the fourth place, it found Russia in the 
midst of industrial disorder, France in po- 
litical anarchy, England on the verge of 
civil war. 

In the fifth place, Germany, winning a 
quarrel in which Austria alone was helpless, 
could expect to give Austria a place in the 
Empire analogous to Bavaria, Saxony, and 
Wurtemberg. 

Turkey was almost a dependency. Bui- 



276 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

garia had been conciliated with a needed loan 
— had a German king, Greece a German 
queen. Let Servia be conquered and the 
overland route to the East was open ! 

There will be no doubt in the minds of un- 
prejudiced people that the ultimatum to 
Servia was one that could not possibly be 
accepted in its entirety, and was phrased with 
a deliberate purpose of finding an excuse for 
war. 

It came at a time when Russia was greatly 
disturbed by labor troubles, and apparently 
helpless. 

However, it enraged the Russian people 
and brought about such expressions of public 
opinion as the Empire had never before 
witnessed. If the Russian government had 
been unwilling to make war, it might have 
faced a war with its own people. 

The Dual Alliance between France and 
Russia had been taken as a counter-measure 
to the Austro-German Dual Alliance of 1879. 
It was military in form and also economic, in 
that a large amount of free French capital 



APPENDIX A 277 

was sent to develop Russia's enormous latent 
resources. 

In fact, it was an alliance more binding on 
France than upon Russia, because in the event 
of war with Germany or Austria, Russia could 
exist without France, but France, in the face 
of these enemies, could not exist without 
Russia. 

When Germany made plain her intention 
to back up the Austrian assault, France saw 
painfully that she would have to fight. 

At the time that King Edward VII came to 
the throne at mature age, English parliamen- 
tarians had been too long in control of the 
government of the country to allow any 
interference on the part of the king. They 
recognized, however, with the continuing 
astuteness in foreign affairs which has marked 
almost all English governments, that in foreign 
affairs royalty is an influence in itself. 

In addition to his royalty, King Edward 
had tact and charm and worldly wisdom far 
beyond the ordinary. 

He charmed the French people with his 



278 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

"gracious manner." He dealt with the 
Czar of Russia as one sovereign with 
another. 

Bismarck and the Kaiser had put German 
princes or princesses on nearly every throne in 
Europe. 

As the price of England's support of their 
revolution the Norwegians gave up their 
preference for a republic and put a very clever 
young man, King Edward's son-in-law, upon 
the throne, naming him Haakon VII. 

King Edward, or those under him, had the 
original idea of forming an alliance with 
Japan. 

He humored the passion of rich Americans 
for presentation at Court as an offset to the 
propaganda of the Irish Nationalists in 
America. 

He realized the full strength of the Ger- 
man army, realized that it threatened the 
supremacy of the country of which he was 
king, and he negotiated the Triple Entente. 

The war broke over Europe far too suddenly 
for Englishmen, absorbed, above other things, 



APPENDIX A 279 

with the Irish question, to learn what was 
going on. 

The party in power contained all the 
doctrinaires in the country. It was hard for 
them to recognize war as a fact; indeed, 
some of them do not recognize it now. 

There was a small party in England desiring 
war with Germany years before the Sarajevo 
murder. 

There developed a much larger element 
which favored war for the reason that France 
and Russia were at war. 

No one can tell whether this element would 
have been in control if Germany had not 
thought it a military necessity to invade 
Belgium. 

Now Belgium was not only a military gate- 
way to France. It was a state artificially 
constructed by the Powers in Europe, its 
integrity had been guaranteed by them, and 
it had been constructed at the behest of Eng- 
lish statesmen as a guarantee that no Great 
Power should occupy the Channel ports across 
from England. To England the German in- 



280 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

vasion of Belgium was not only a violation of 
a treaty but a direct military threat at her 
own independence. 

War followed as a matter of national 
necessity. 



APPENDIX B 

Lessons for America from Great 
Britain's Shortcomings in 
This War 

The situation in which Great Britain finds 
itself in this great war is so similar to that in 
which war would place America that a study 
of it is of special interest. 

To be sure the difficulties under which 
Great Britain is laboring are not as great as 
ours would be, and she has the use and pro- 
tection of her extraordinary navy, which we, 
in like circumstances, would not have. How- 
ever, the points of similarity are many and 
striking. 

War came upon England under a liberal 
government. This government had been in 
power seven years. It stood for all that is 
best in our Progressive and in the liberal side 
of our Democratic parties. 

281 



282 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

It passed a home rule bill for Ireland. It 
had brought to the front religious equality 
in Wales. It passed a series of measures for 
the subdividing of land-ownerships. It stood 
at the very front in its enactments for the 
benefit of workingmen. It found means for 
increasing revenue by taxing those best able 
to pay. It was, to be sure, not free from 
the leaven of those who believed imprac- 
ticableness and progress to be the same 
thing, but it was able to retain the support 
of this element without seriously yielding to 
its demands. To its permanent credit, it 
maintained the supremacy of the national 
fleet. It thought necessary, however, to neg- 
lect the army in many essential details in order 
to provide funds for its altruistic purposes. 

Parsimony was especially shown toward 
the artillery arm, in the battery organization 
adopted, and in the guns themselves. The 
field-pieces in use were greatly inferior to the 
French 75's, which could have been obtained 
by paying the cost of reequipment ; the field 
howitzers were inexact in shooting ; but more 



APPENDIX B 

damning to the makers of the budget was a 
lack of high-power field glasses, range finders, 
field telephones, etc. 

Parsimony, backed by aristocracy, was re- 
sponsible for such small pay to officers that 
only men with some independent means could 
afford to be officers, and hence from these 
was required less technical skill than is de- 
manded of officers in the continental countries. 

The British army recognized its own weak- 
ness, and for years had preached reorganiza- 
tion upon the Prussian system. 

War found the English regular army at 
home only 150,000 strong. It found terri- 
torial troops, semi-recruited and semi-organ- 
ized regiments, which, however, could not be 
called into foreign war without their consent. 

However, lest the casual reader pass too 
harsh judgment upon the parliamentary poli- 
ticians who sent to their death soldiers less 
trained and equipped than their enemy, let 
us give them credit for greater patriotism and 
foresight than the American Congress has ever 
shown. 



284 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The English army was not divided into a 
number of small army posts, in order to 
furnish "pie" to as many congressmen as 
possible, but was kept in units, so battle 
tactics could be learned. 

With all Europe organized in comprehen- 
sive fashion, the reason for Great Britain's 
backwardness is to be found in the heredi- 
tary opposition to a standing army, which, 
incidentally, we inherited along with other 
English customs ; in a false sense of security 
behind the barrier of the Channel and in a 
sense of racial superiority and self-content, 
and, more influential than the rest, in recent 
years, a group which found mental and sen- 
suous pleasure, as well as financial and 
political profit, in preaching a propaganda of 
national atavism. 

Shortly before the war broke out came the 
army crisis over home rule. Sir Edward 
Carson organized a military force to resist it. 
When the government began military steps 
to enforce it, the army balked ; Field Marshal 
Sir John French resigned the position of chief 



APPENDIX B 285 

of staff; other officers resigned their com- 
missions. 

The secretary of war tried to find a middle 
ground between the home rule people and the 
army, failed, and resigned his portfolio. 

The radical party, which saw no farther 
than the seashore, demanded the instant dis- 
missal of the army and the "immediate" 
organization of a "democratic force" to 
coerce Ulster. 

The Prime Minister is the keystone of the 
arch of the British parliamentary system. 
Upon him devolves the responsibility of pre- 
venting the structure from tumbling to the 
ground. 

It must be said of Mr. Herbert Asquith 
that under these terrible times he has held 
together the most antagonistic elements ever 
present in a government. Following the 
attitude which has allowed England to exist 
as a democracy for centuries in a continent 
of autocracies, he put nation before party 
and retained the army, his personal and 
political enemies. 



286 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

In addition to his other cares he took on 
the ministry of war. A more partisan course 
would have destroyed his country. 

Then the crash came. Nothing was 
farther from the minds of Britishers than 
war. Why the country was at all prepared 
demands a word of explanation to Americans. 

The members of the English Cabinet, even 
more than the American, are selected for 
their political strength rather than special 
fitness. But the members once selected, the 
portfolios are divided with the idea of giving 
to each member the work for which he is 
best fitted, instead of giving the offices in 
order of their dignity to the Cabinet members 
in the order of their political importance, as 
with us. 

Not the most important politician but the 
politician most informed on foreign affairs 
is made minister of foreign affairs. That 
member of the Cabinet most capable of assist- 
ing the navy is made secretary of the navy. 

Thus, while Sir Edward Grey is a less 
gifted man than Mr. Bryan, he is a more effi- 



APPENDIX B 287 

cient minister of foreign affairs ; and while 
Mr. Churchill — if tried by a hundred tests 
— might show less all-round ability than 
Mr. Daniels, he, in contrast to the latter, 
added to instead of detracted from the work 
of the naval experts under him. 

Also, Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Winston 
Churchill put the duties of their offices above 
politics. 

When all British eyes were on the crisis in 
Ireland, Sir Edward Grey, a politician, was 
watching the hand-sized cloud over Belgrade. 

Churchill, still more a politician, but a pa- 
triot, held the great fleet mobilized, ready for 
the rupture, and concealed his readiness under 
cover of the domestic excitement. He even 
had the courage and patriotism to order, with- 
out sanction of Parliament, the supplies that 
would be necessary for the beginning of war. 

It is not necessary to point out that in 
neither our foreign or naval branches were 
we so manned as to take the steps which, 
taken by the British radical ministers, saved 
their nation. 



288 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

The first military preparations were 
splendid. Lord Kitchener, the most widely 
known British general, was made secretary 
of war. Sir John French, considered the 
greatest British tactician, was given com- 
mand of the active force, although he was a 
well-known opponent of the government. 

The army's preparedness was such that 
an army of 150,000 men was landed in 
France with more equipment per man and 
with less effort than Funston's brigade had 
been transported to Vera Cruz three months 
before. 

I dwell upon this fact now so that when 
the reader sees later how hopelessly inferior 
to Germany, Russia, France, and Austria 
England's land power turned out to be he 
may realize in some measure the desperate 
condition of our own unpreparedness. 

Landed, the British army advanced to 
Belgium, was caught in the collapse of the 
French offensive, fought splendidly in retreat, 
using effectively its only superiority over the 
Germans, — rifle shooting, — turned at the 



APPENDIX B 289 

Marne, and fought its way back to Ypres, 
where all that is left of it now is. 

How was it that even in face of a hostile 
government this army from the outset of 
war has been able to do what no English or 
American army has ever before been able to 
do at the outset of war? 

The answer is twofold. First, the army 
had been kept in large units and manoeuvred 
in large units. Second, the initiative of the 
officers had not been dulled by the perse- 
cution that exists in our army and which 
seems unavoidable when civilians who have 
never lived under military discipline are 
given military power over others. I refer 
not so much to presidents and secretaries of 
war and navy, although none of these are 
guiltless, as to chairmen of Senate and House 
military and naval committees and to the 
membership of both houses. 

Returning to the British army. It has 
not been able to advance a foot since the 
battle of Ypres was ended by the Russian 



290 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

diversion against Cracow in October. Ad- 
vance has been impossible. 

To appreciate why it has been impossible, 
it is necessary to summarize modern English 
history. 

After obtaining supremacy at sea she pro- 
ceeded to conquer all the territory of the 
world that was unable to protect itself. 
Contemporaneously came the development 
of steam and steel and there was found in 
the islands the greatest deposits of coal and 
iron in Europe. 

This brought about two conditions — an 
enormous increase in the national wealth and 
the transformation of the nation from an 
agricultural to a manufacturing country. 

Land was held in England, as elsewhere in 
Europe, in a few large ownerships. 

France, Prussia, and Russia at various 
times had divided the land among the in- 
habitants. This was too unconstitutional for 
England. She therefore repealed the corn 
laws, giving the people cheap food, rendering 
the cultivation of English land unprofitable, 



APPENDIX B 291 

and rendering the nation dependent for food 
upon importation, and hence upon a con- 
tinued control of the sea. 

It had also rendered her dependent to a 
marked degree upon America for her food 
supply. The great fleet which she has main- 
tained in consequence has made the English 
feel that a modern army was unnecessary. 
The great fleet also interested in preserving 
the American wheat production for the Eng- 
lish market has interfered more than once 
between the military European nations and 
the United States, affording us a temporary 
and hazardous security. 

Wealth has poured in upon England. The 
accident of ownership as well as the laws of 
taxation and inheritance have tended to great 
inequality in its distribution. Hence, politi- 
cal activity for half a century has centred 
around the distribution of existing national 
wealth, not its increase. It has been more 
like America during the last ten years than 
America during the preceding decade. 

Workmen have listened to the preaching 



292 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

of a world-wide union against employers, not 
realizing that, in the Empire adjoining, em- 
ployers and workmen were cooperating to 
seize the advantageous trade position of Eng- 
land, and employers and employed alike take 
from the English the advantage that nature 
and the forefathers had given them. 

It was upon a people thus preoccupied 
that the war burst in August, 1914. 

The government did all that a democratic 
government could do. It put its best-known 
general in charge of the war and gave him a 
free hand. 

Lord Kitchener had conquered the Mahdi 
of Egypt and had done capable work in 
the conquest of South Africa. After Earl 
Roberts, he was the chief military figure of a 
nation given to worshipping the men who 
bring distinction to it. 

He was hailed as possessing all the ability 
that Wellington had possessed and even as 
much as Englishmen had been taught to 
believe Wellington had possessed. 

That Kitchener is a far-sighted man and 



APPENDIX B 293 

a strong man was shown by his insistence 
upon an army of a million men and adequate 
training before taking the field, something 
England was unprepared to consider. 

He came to power with all an English 
or American officer's unfamiliarity with his 
nation. 

He, like these, denied all opportunity to 
work out a scheme of war adapted to the 
habits and interests of his people, had 
swallowed whole the best ready-made plan — 
the Prussian. 

Thus, when in the first panic of war Eng- 
land practically turned the government of 
the country over to Kitchener and asked 
him to perform a miracle, one of his first acts 
was to attempt to direct the press, in emula- 
tion of the Prussian principle. 

In Prussia the press is a weak estate held 
in contempt and the governing hand is strong 
and able. 

The English press is the chief element of 
national strength. 

The English publicists, who have substan- 



294 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

tially dominated world public opinion for a 
century in the interest of the British Empire, 
were put under the governance of men who 
knew nothing of journalism and were con- 
sidered too weak to work at their own pro- 
fession — war. 

Of course the English nation lacked any 
comprehensive military system, lacked mili- 
tary knowledge and knowledge of military 
needs. Her immediate need was education, 
which, with a little intelligent help, the 
British press was eager to give. 

Such education, the bungling censors, 
puffed up by sudden authority, venting at 
last pent-up resentment against government 
and press, refused to allow. 

But before detailing this let us examine 
England's facilities for making an army and 
what she has accomplished. 

Although the country had refused to follow 
the army's far-seeing advice and introduce 
universal service, it had been far from ignor- 
ing all warning. 

A system of "territorials" had been intro- 



APPENDIX B 295 

duced, composed of 18,000 cavalry and over 
200,000 infantry, which met in annual ma- 
noeuvres with the regulars every year. 

As graduates of the Boer war were a num- 
ber of semi-trained troops and semi-educated 
officers. 

The rudiments of military education had 
been taught in the colleges and public schools 
in recent years. 

This gave England a start which we, for 
instance, cannot equal. The disadvantage 
was that the amateur soldiers did not appre- 
ciate the short distance they had travelled on 
the road of soldiering. 

The territorials volunteered very well and 
many battalions of them have been already 
sent to the front, where they have behaved 
gallantly but not successfully. 

It was, perhaps, the salvation of the coun- 
try that a radical government was in power 
when the war came. 

Extreme members of the Cabinet resigned ; 
some were unwilling to attack their former 
colleagues ; others who did were largely dis- 



296 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

credited as they would not have been if they 
had attacked the conservatives. 

The Opposition became the leaders in sup- 
port of the government's war policy. 

Old soldiers, sacrificing all personal in- 
terests, turned out to a man. 

The veterans of the African campaign re- 
turned to the army. The leisure class was 
delighted to find occupation, especially occu- 
pation in support of their country. 

Volunteers flocked to the colors, and they 
did so without any idea that they were going 
to a picnic. 

They went to work to learn to become sol- 
diers. They realized from the casualty list 
of the regulars that this war was no African 
campaign. Enlistments were made, not for 
sixty days or six months, but for the whole 
war. 

But to raise a volunteer army of 1,000,000 
men and not disturb business — the first 
idea in England — is impossible. A number 
of expedients were tried. Posters were put 
up all over England calling for volunteers, 



APPENDIX B 297 

while the Press Bureau was busy sending out 
stories — false ones — giving the impression 
that volunteers were not needed. 

Kitchener had said that the new army 
would be ready in May. In August, 1914, 
and again in October the Russian army 
sacrificed itself to reduce the pressure on the 
French-English-Belgian front. Now in August 
the Austrians and Germans are massing 
against the Russians, but Kitchener's army is 
not ready. 

In March, Sir John French attempted an 
advance, but was unsuccessful. In May the 
Germans attacked with gas and almost broke 
through to Calais. Only the extraordinary 
courage of the Canadians prevented them. 

To all soldiers the fact had become plain that 
as a military factor Great Britain was negligible. 

The military in control of the press forbade 
telling the people the truth that the Germans 
knew well enough. Without educating the 
people it was impossible to make such a mili- 
tary organization as could count in this war. 
England was struck on a dead centre. 



298 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

At this time Lord Northcliffe, proprietor 
of The Times, The Daily Mail, and other 
papers, undertook a patriotic role. 

"Friend of my heart, is it meet or wise to 
warn a King of his enemies?" 

The people have been king of England for 
long and have become so accustomed to 
flattery as to resent unpleasant truths. 

Northcliffe began to print a part of the truth 
about the situation. He began to criticise 
the men who were popularly supposed to be 
doing the impossible. People who were "too 
patriotic" to face facts, or who were afraid to 
do so, publicly burned The Times. 

The bigoted Press Bureau promptly prose- 
cuted Northcliffe upon a trumped-up charge, 
and an English judge, following up the custom 
which makes an Englishman the only man in 
the world safe from both official malice and 
popular outcry, dismissed the case. 

Northcliffe continued his campaign, and 
not without animus. 

The expedition to take the Dardanelles 
failed. The Lusitania was torpedoed. 



APPENDIX B 299 

Winston Churchill had ridden roughly in 
his career, and became the first sacrifice to 
the situation. 

His administration of the Admiralty since 
the outbreak of the war must be judged after 
the lapse of time. No one outside of the 
department knows to-day whether it was 
good or bad. 

But, as a man largely responsible for the 
maintenance of the power of the British navy 
in the face of the opposition of many of those 
upon whom he depended for political life, 
he should have more charity than the British 
public gives him. 

He has acted the part of patriot that Sec- 
retary Garrison is acting with us. 

The dismissal of Winston Churchill, while 
it has soothed some irritated nerves and may, 
or may not, have improved the efficiency of 
the Navy Department, could not, and did 
not, change the military situation, which was 
that Great Britain, by far the richest and 
greatest manufacturing country in the war, 
was turning out less than one-tenth of the 



300 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

munitions turned out by any of the other 
contestants, and was unable decently to 
supply her army in the field, so far from pro- 
viding for the new, great army in training. 

The fault is partly due, no doubt, to the 
military authorities, who had had no oppor- 
tunity of becoming acquainted with affairs 
on a large scale, and who, in the first glow of 
new-found authority, were unwilling to asso- 
ciate with themselves competent business men. 

It was due in a greater part to the work- 
men, who insisted on limiting the output per 
man, as they had become accustomed to do 
during the many years of easy peace Eng- 
land's advantageous position had brought 
them. They were never told how serious 
was the situation of the nation ; on the con- 
trary, they were entirely deceived at the 
beginning of the war, and have been given 
only a small part of the truth to date. 

The government is now fully awake to the 
seriousness of the situation. The War De- 
partment officials have learned that they 
cannot do all the work themselves. 



APPENDIX B 301 

The plan is forming to make Great Britain 
a nation at war in the same sense that Ger- 
many, Austria, France, and Russia are at 
war; but with no governmental machinery 
to do this with and with a public mind un- 
accustomed to such discipline, the task is 
herculean. 

Leading politicians have sounded warning 
in the most rousing speeches and in the same 
issue of the paper that these warnings have 
been produced the military Press Bureau and 
headline writers have discounted the speeches 
by representing some minor skirmish as a sub- 
stantial victory and by announcing a sub- 
stantial defeat as a strategic retirement. 

The most forceful radical politician in 
Great Britain, Lloyd George, has taken upon 
himself the leadership in bringing the union 
workingmen under martial law. 

Patriotically he put all the popularity he 
had acquired in leading the laborers against 
their employers and all his sublety as a polit- 
ical campaigner in the service of the nation. 

Many of his former colleagues were unable 



302 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

to see the necessity of the measure he intro- 
duced; some were of a type of mind that 
could not have seen it if the Prussian Impe- 
rial Guard was goose-stepping in Trafalgar 
Square. They intrenched themselves upon 
the unstormed heights of union rules and 
awaited his attack. 

Lloyd George, too skilful to be drawn 
against such a barrier, marched by the flank 
and blamed all England's ills on — drink ! 

He broke the tension, he confused the issue. 
Followed Babel, and from Babel such a law 
is being enacted as the Czar of Russia has 
not decreed. Everybody is busy blaming 
everybody else, and they are working to an 
agreement to place the blame on the army, 
most of which has died fighting for a nation 
that had answered its warnings with insult. 

It will take a strong combination of tact 
and firmness to make the law work without 
causing civil discord ; indeed, at the moment 
of writing a strike of the South Wales coal 
miners threatens the nation with defeat. 

However, the nation is on the right track 



APPENDIX B 303 

in handling the munitions question; that is, 
all of it excepting the Press Bureau. 

The more serious problem which confronts 
the nation is the formation of an army large 
enough and at the same time efficient enough 
to meet the Germans in the open field. 

Where small armies suffice it is evident 
that voluntary armies are better than armies 
trained by universal service, because the 
more adventurous volunteer and men not 
up to the physical requirements may be re- 
jected, but where a substantial portion of the 
nation is needed for the war the voluntary 
system must collapse utterly, as it has in 
England. 

In collecting a large volunteer army, men 
must be tempted in every way. They must 
be allowed to form special regiments of 
different classes, so that while one regiment 
may contain over one hundred men fit to be 
officers another regiment may contain less 
than ten. 

Men of ages varying from twenty to forty 
may be in the same regiment and men from 



304 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

the strongest to the weakest in physique 
may be put in the same regiment, with a result 
that a group of such regiments is worth about 
half as much as an equal number of men 
grouped according to the Prussian system. 

Eyewitnesses who were present at the re- 
occupation of Peremysl by the Germans 
speak of the fact that the active troops occu- 
pied the fortress, and that as soon as it was 
in their possession the landwehr, or older 
men, took their places and the young men 
were again put in the field to attack. 

In occupying fortresses and lines of 
trenches, middle-aged men are substantially 
as good as the youngest. Germany uses her 
middle-aged men for this kind of work, and 
the young men for active work. 

Under the voluntary system, where old 
and young are mixed together, half regiments 
of young men are immobilized in fortifica- 
tions, and regiments composed in half of 
oldish men are sent on long marches, with the 
result that half of each regiment is left on 
the roadside. It must be plain that the 



APPENDIX B 305 

latter form of organization can never defeat 
the former. 

Let it be borne in mind that Great Britain 
has organized a voluntary army infinitely 
better than a voluntary army has ever been 
organized before, and has allowed less politics 
to interfere than had been thought possible. 

It has exceeded every standard of a volun- 
teer army that has ever been imagined, and 
yet has demonstrated just one thing — that 
a large voluntary army cannot compete with 
universal service troops. 

How can it, when a major commanding 
500 men has less military education than a 
sergeant commanding thirty men; yes, and 
often less military education than a private 
commanding only himself? 

Kitchener's army has, therefore, done one 
great thing — it has shown that the whole 
military system of Great Britain must be 
revolutionized, and after such a system has 
been revolutionized the last year's training 
will pay for itself in measure in the new 
organization. 



306 WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 

To send the present army to the continent 
to fight against a better organized, better 
trained German force, is to slaughter so many 
thousands of men without any possible 
chance of victory. 

At this point the reader who is willing to 
credit my statement must think to himself : 

"Then England is in a very desperate 
position." 

So she would be if it were not for her navy, 
which is as efficient in personnel as it is 
powerful in numbers. It has met every test, 
and barring accidents, will continue to do so. 

It is for Americans to bear in mind that 
we cannot expect to do better on land than 
Great Britain has done, and at sea, even if 
our naval authorities were free to conduct the 
fleet according to their best opinion, as they 
would not be, there are at least three naval 
powers that could wipe us off the seas. 



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